A stampede left at least 85 people dead and hundreds injured Thursday in Yemen during a charity action, a new tragedy hitting the impoverished country just as it hoped to turn the page on a devastating war.
The disaster occurred overnight in Sanaa, the capital of rebel-held Yemen, where hundreds of people had gathered at a school in the old city to receive aid of 5,000 riyals, about eight dollars, distributed by a trader.
This sum represents the equivalent of a meal for a family, in one of the poorest countries of the Arab world, which is also faced with galloping inflation. The streets of Sanaa are also less crowded than in previous years during this period of Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
“People jostled, on top of each other, and my head hit a wall,” said Alaa Said, a 28-year-old Sanaa resident who was among the lightly injured. “I was among those at the end of a huge crowd and we heard screams coming from the front,” said Nabil Ahmed, another 23-year-old survivor.
Footage broadcast by Al-Massira, the rebels’ television channel, shows a dense crowd and people climbing over each other in an attempt to clear their way.
Some struggle, as guards in military uniform try to push them in the opposite direction.
In another video, bodies lie on the ground, in general panic.
Some witnesses claim that gunshots caused the crowd to move, which could not be independently verified by AFP.
On the spot, the journalists did not have access to the scene of the accident, cordoned off by the security services of the rebels. Torn clothes and crushed shoes still litter the narrow streets nearby.
“At least 85 people were killed, and more than 322 were injured,” a Houthi security official in Sanaa told AFP, a report confirmed by local medical authorities.
“Children are among the dead” and about 50 injured are in serious condition, according to the Houthi official who requested anonymity, not being authorized to speak to the media.
This tragedy has bereaved Yemen at a time when its 30 million inhabitants hoped to finally emerge from the war. The Houthis, close to Iran, took the capital in 2014, prompting the intervention a few months later of a military coalition, led by Saudi Arabia, to support government forces.
The war claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and caused one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. Efforts to end the conflict have intensified in recent weeks amid warming relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
The UN envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg, said he was “deeply saddened by the tragic stampede”.
This “drama” recalls “the urgency to put an end (…) to the humanitarian crisis (…) by resolving the conflict”, for its part reacted the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The United States and the United Kingdom also expressed their condolences.
Sanaa authorities attributed the disaster to “overcrowding” in the narrow street leading to the school. “When the doors opened, the crowd rushed up the stairs leading to the schoolyard,” senior rebel leader Mohammed Ali al-Houthi wrote on Twitter.
They announced the opening of an investigation. Three traders have already been “arrested”, a Houthi official told AFP.
According to a witness interviewed by the Houthis, the citizens had “been informed almost a week ago that money would be distributed without conditions”.
This stampede is among the deadliest crowd movements in the world for ten years, according to an AFP count.
It comes on top of a context of epidemics, lack of drinking water and acute hunger, with more than three-quarters of the population depending on international aid which continues to decline.
In rebel-held areas, including the capital, many civil servants have not been paid for months.
The country has seen its share of tragedies in recent years, including coalition raids that killed dozens of civilians. And in 2022, 45 migrants had died in the fire of a center controlled by the rebels.
20/04/2023 19:11:14 Sanaa (AFP) © 2023 AFP