VIDEO: Scramble to save family trapped by flooding in Amman

Dramatic video footage shows a Jordanian man saving a family trapped inside a house as water gushes through a window in Amman, as heavy rainfall in the Jordanian kingdom resulted in flooding on Thursday morning.

Jordan’s Rakan Qteishat led a group of mentrying to rescue the family, and pulling away the metal frame of the window to save six children trapped in the basement in Amman’s Hai Nazzal area during the flash floods. His feat was celebrated on social media with some dubbing him "Aquaman".

The torrential downpour lasted 45 minutes but many homes, streets, and tunnels were flooded as water levels reached 40mm, according to meteorological sources.

Four people were killed, including three Egyptian nationals - two of whom were children.

The mayor of Amman, Aqel Baltaji, conducted a meeting on Friday with officials from the municipality to discuss how to deal with the exceptional weather situation.

Some houses had their ground floors completely submerged under water.

In the video below, a family was trapped in the basement with water gushing out of the window. Qteishat pulled at the metal framework outside the window, eventually tearing it down, and the children tumbled out.

“We did not fear for our lives but only thought of the kids inside the house,” he said afterwards in a video posted to Facebook. 

The group of children included a one-year-old, and the oldest was 12. 

Tunnels and major intersections in the city centre were awash with the prolific flow of water from the rain. Emergency services who worked around the clock in the aftermath dealt with 265 cases, all of which had suffered from the weather conditions.

Baltaji stressed the need to continue working to remove dust and construction waste in the water flow, which blocked the drainage, in a bid for the general situation to return to normalcy.

In downtown Amman, home to a bustling marketplace, over 200 clothes stores suffered damages as a result of the floods, with the initial losses estimated to be around 5 million dinars (4.6 million UK pounds, or over 7 million US dollars).

Jordan has witnessed a week of bad weather, with the capital experiencing an unseasonal sandstorm earlier this week on 4 November.