(Sanaa) At least 79 people were killed and more than 100 injured in a stampede in the capital Sanaa at the hands of Houthi rebels, Houthi officials told AFP on Thursday.
“Seventy-nine people were killed, and 110 were injured” in a stampede during a charity event in the Bab el-Yemen neighborhood, a Houthi medical official said. This toll was confirmed by two other rebel sources.
The victims were transported to nearby hospitals, and the organizers of the event were arrested, the Interior Ministry said in a statement carried by the rebel news agency, Saba.
The press release did not specify the number of victims, contenting itself with mentioning “dozens of deaths following a stampede during a chaotic distribution of sums of money by certain traders”.
This charitable action comes a few days before the Eid al-Fitr holiday, which marks the end of the Muslim month of fasting.
Houthi rebels, close to Iran, took control of the capital Sanaa in 2014, prompting the intervention a few months later of a military coalition, led by Saudi Arabia, to support the government.
Since then, the war in Yemen has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, direct and indirect victims of the conflict, and plunged the poorest country on the Arabian Peninsula into one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, according to the UN.
