Mecca underwater: Cars swept away, streets become rivers in Saudi holy city

Huge swathes of Saudi Arabia including the holy city of Mecca are suffering torrential downpours amid a brutal storm that has transformed streets into rivers and swept cars away, Report informs via MailOnline.

Shocking images taken on the outskirts of the city showed how cars were almost completely submerged with nothing but the top of their rooves cresting the water line.

Saudi Arabia's Meteorological Department issued a red alert for Mecca, Madinah and the port city Jeddah, which is notorious for flooding and was the site of a catastrophic deluge in 2009 in which more than 100 people died.

This week's heavy rains come months after the Gulf states were battered by record-breaking rainfall in April and May, leaving more than two dozen people dead.

Clips shared on social media showed how major highways in the Kingdom were overrun by devastating floodwater that cascaded down typically dry and rocky outcrops and swept through cities and towns below.

Residents were seen abandoning their cars in the street to run to safety as other partially submerged vehicles tried to plough through feet of standing water.

Rainstorms and flooding are by no means a rare phenomenon in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, especially in winter.

Many cities have famously underdeveloped drainage and sewage systems, with urban planners overseeing the region's rapid development in the late 20th century failing to anticipate the frequency of heavy rainfall - or how such a rapid accumulation of water can impact typically arid terrain.