This crowd movement, which comes a few days before the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, took place in a school in the old town district, where hundreds of people had gathered to receive financial aid.
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Drama in Yemen. At least 85 people were killed and more than 322 injured Thursday, April 20 in Sanaa, the capital in the hands of the rebels. This crowd movement, which comes a few days before the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, took place in a school in the old town district, where hundreds of people had gathered to receive financial aid, according to testimonies collected by an AFP journalist.
Women and children are among the victims and fifty injured are in serious condition. The authorities of Sanaa did not mention the causes of the accident or the number of victims, contenting themselves with evoking “dozens of dead following a stampede during a chaotic distribution of sums of money by some traders”.
Commission of Inquiry into the Causes of the Accident
The victims were transported to nearby hospitals, and the organizers of the event arrested, the interior ministry said in a statement carried by the rebel news agency, Saba. “Three traders were arrested”, said a security official in Sanaa. The chairman of the rebels’ Supreme Political Council, Mehdi Mashat, announced the “creation of a commission to investigate the causes of the accident”according to Saba.
Yemen, the poorest country on the Arabian Peninsula, has been torn apart since 2014 by a conflict between Houthi rebels, backed by Iran, and pro-government forces backed by a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia. The war has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and plunged the population of some 30 million into one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, according to the UN.
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