18 killed in Yemen dynamite warehouse explosion

SANA’A - At least 18 people were killed and several injured in an explosion at a dynamite warehouse in the southern Yemeni city of Taiz Tuesday, witnesses and rescuers said.

Witnesses told DPA that the pre-dawn explosion destroyed three buildings housing eight families near the warehouse in Yemen’s second-largest city.

They said the store was owned by an arms dealer and was used for road construction in the mountainous province of Taiz.

“The explosion tore apart three buildings,” Muhammad Saeed, a witness said by phone. “Many people are still under the wreckage.”

Rescuers pulled out bodies of six women, two children and an elderly man from the wreckage of two buildings, civil defence sources said, adding that 15 injured people were rushed to hospitals.

They said the explosives were stored in the basement of a four-storey building that was reduced to rubble in the residential al-Masbah area.

Security officials said search and rescue operations were continuing.