The disaster is said to have occurred in connection with merchants starting to hand out money in the older parts of the city, in Bab al-Yemen, a few days before the end of the fasting month of Ramadan.
Hundreds of poor quickly gathered outside the school building where the distribution took place. According to two witnesses that the AP news agency refers to, armed Houthis should have fired warning shots into the air in an attempt to control the crowd. But instead, one of the shots appears to have hit a power line which exploded, causing the panic.
Authorities unaware
The dead and injured have been taken to nearby hospitals, the Huthi rebels’ interior ministry says, according to the rebel-controlled Saba news agency.
The ministry’s spokesperson Abdel-Khaleq al-Aghri blames the disaster on those responsible for the distribution, which is said to have taken place without notifying local authorities.
According to al-Masirah TV channel, also controlled by the Huthi rebels, 13 are critically injured.
Controlled by rebels
Sana has been controlled by the rebels since 2014, who forced the more internationally recognized government to flee. A broad military coalition led by Saudi Arabia intervened the following year on the government’s side in the conflict that has continued ever since. More than 150,000 lives have been claimed in the war since then, but this year there has been hope for a resolution to the conflict, with the exchange of hundreds of prisoners and plans for peace talks to begin after the Eid al-Fitr holiday, which ends the fasting month.
