Thirty corpses were recovered on Thursday after the landslide hit the small village of Al-Dhafeer, on a rocky hillside 70 kilometres west of the capital Sanaa, while dozens were reported missing.
An interior ministry official said the number of dead had risen to 45.
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 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 was not immediately clear what caused the landslide.
Yemen's seismology centre had no word of an earthquake and there were no reports of severe weather.
The avalanche hit late on Thursday while most residents were still in bed, sending boulders the size of trucks crashing down, destroying about 30 homes.
Soldiers and civilians with shovels dug through the ruins of stone houses while a bulldozer pushed at larger stones.
Rescue workers said they heard moans and cries from beneath some of the crushed homes.
"Big rocks came tumbling down the side of the mountain," said village leader Saleh Hamoud.
"This is making it difficult to reach victims because they're stuck under these big boulders."
Mr Hamoud said he escaped harm, but eight members of his family, including his wife and children, were missing.
The remoteness of the village and the inexperience of rescue workers was complicating the search operation, he said.
"We have little experience and limited capabilities. And what's making things worse is that it happened at night when everyone was asleep in their home," he said.
For centuries Yemenis have built their houses on the sides of mountains, sometimes carving homes out of the rockside.