Torn clothes and crushed shoes litter the narrow lanes of the old city of Sanaa, Yemen’s capital, where a deadly stampede on Thursday turned a charity event into a scene of terror in the country already beset by poverty and war.
An atmosphere of mourning invaded the historic district of the capital, around the Main school where, in the night, 85 people died and hundreds of others injured.
The crowd movement occurred during the distribution of the equivalent of eight dollars, the price of a family meal.
The initiative was launched by a merchant in the city on the occasion of Eid al-Fitr, the holiday marking the end of Ramadan, the holy month of Muslim fasting.
Charities are common at this time of year in the Muslim world and, in Yemen, they take on particular importance as the country suffers one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world due to the war between the rebels and the government.
“Many people came to receive alms,” Alaa Said, a 28-year-old Sanaa resident who is among the lightly injured, told AFP. “People jostled, on top of each other, and my head hit a wall,” he continues.
The area was quickly cordoned off by the security forces of the Houthi rebels, a movement close to Iran which seized Sanaa in 2014. But the door of the school torn down and the bloodstains can be seen in the distance on the stone stairs that lead to the establishment.
When the stampede began, Nabil Ahmed, another survivor, was “at the end of the crowd”. “We heard screams coming from the front,” recalls the 23-year-old.
Trapped
Footage released by rebel-owned media shows people trapped, pleading to be released while others climb over the crowd in an attempt to flee.
Another video also released by the Houthis shows corpses on the ground as survivors flee. In other images, white body bags can be seen lined up on the floor of a hospital and bodies lying covered in green sheets.
Among the survivors, including children, some were lying in shock on hospital beds, often with bandaged limbs and bleeding wounds, according to these images.
At least 85 people died and 322 were injured, two rebel officials told AFP on condition of anonymity. The official report puts 78 dead and 77 injured.
The rebel authorities, who attribute the disaster to an “excess of people”, announced the opening of an investigation and the arrest of three men.
This tragedy adds to a long list of tragedies caused by the war in Yemen. Displacements, epidemics, lack of drinking water, acute hunger: more than three quarters of the approximately 30 million inhabitants depend on international aid which has continued to decline.
The bloody conflict has pitted rebels backed by Iran against pro-government forces backed by neighboring Saudi Arabia for more than eight years. The recent rapprochement between Tehran and Riyadh raises hopes of appeasement in the Middle East, particularly in Yemen.