A cyclone with hurricane-force winds made landfall on Yemen's Arabian Sea coast on Tuesday, flooding the country's fifth-largest city Mukalla and sending thousands of people fleeing for shelter. Officials and meteorologists say the storm is the most intense in decades in the arid country, whose storm response is hampered by poverty and a raging civil war. In the provincial capital Mukalla, whose 300,000 people are largely ruled by Al-Qaida fighters since the army withdrew in April, water submerged cars on city streets and caused dozens of families to flee to a hospital for fear of rock slides. Residents said the seafront promenade and many homes had been destroyed by the cyclone, called Chapala, and officials in the dry hinterland province of Shabwa said about 6,000 people had moved to higher ground. "The wind knocked out power completely in the city and people were terrified. Some residents had to leave their homes and escape to higher areas where flooding was less; it was a difficult night but it passed off peacefully," said Sabri Saleem, who lives in Mukalla. There were no initial reports of injuries. Yemen's Fisheries Minister Fahd Kafayen said in a news conference from the Saudi capital Riyadh that 117 homes had been destroyed in the island of Socotra, 612 homes had been partially damaged, dozens of fishing vessels were missing. He said one village in Shabwa Province had been totally submerged but all the families had been rescued. Kafayen said the cyclone was pounding Hadramawt and Shabwa provinces. Thousands of families had been displaced. Communications were cut off from Hadramawt and were difficult to Mukalla. An Al-Qaida militant on Twitter prayed for deliverance from the storm and said that a U.S. pilotless drone was flying especially low over the city, where the militant group's deputy leader was killed in an airstrike in June. "May God cause it to crash," said the man, going by the name of Laith al-Mukalla. "God spare us your wrath, and place the rains in heart of the valleys and mountains." The cyclone first hit the remote Yemeni island of Socotra, killing three people and displacing thousands.
