Thirty corpses had been recovered Thursday after the landslide hit the small village of Al-Dhafeer, on a rocky hillside 70 kilometers (40 miles) west of the capital Sanaa, while dozens were reported missing.
"The number (of dead) has increased to 45," an interior ministry offical said, requesting anonymity.
The death toll was expected to rise further as dozens of residents from the village of some 270 people were still missing and believed to be under the mud and rubble.
Rescuers used tractors and small earthmovers to clear the rubble and some people used their hands to search for survivors.
Yemen's Saba official news agency said eight people have so far been recovered alive.
It had reported Thursday that 25 out of the village's 31 houses were destroyed, buried under huge piles of rocks.
It was not immediately clear what caused the landslide. Yemen's seismology center had no word of an earthquake and there were no reports of severe weather.
Despite its proximity to oil-rich Saudi Arabia, Yemen is one of the world's poorest countries with a per capita gross domestic product of just 800 dollars.