A man walks on the rubble of a warehouse destroyed by an explosion in Sanaa, Yemen, on April 9, 2019. The death toll from the explosion on April 7 in a warehouse in Sanaa has increased to 15, including seven schoolgirls, while more than 100 others mostly female students were wounded, a medic told Xinhua on Tuesday. (Xinhua/Mohammed Mohammed)
SANAA, April 9 (Xinhua) -- The death toll from Sunday's explosion in a warehouse in Yemen's capital Sanaa has increased to 15, including seven schoolgirls, while more than 100 others mostly female students were wounded, a medic told Xinhua on Tuesday.
"The death toll has increased from 13 to 15, including seven schoolgirls," the medic told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.
The Sunday's explosion occurred in a warehouse near two schools in Sawan quarter, the most densely populated neighborhood, east of Sanaa.
The Houthi rebels accused the government-allied Saudi-led coalition of conducting an airstrike on the area. However, the coalition in a statement aired by Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television denied carrying out any airstrike on Sanaa on Sunday.
The government in a statement carried by Saba news agency blamed the Houthi rebels for the explosion and accused the rebels of storing weapons in populated areas. However, Houthis denied the accusations.
On Sunday night, the United Nations said on its website that an explosion in a warehouse in Sawan killed at least 13 civilians, including seven schoolgirls, and wounded more than 100 others.
Saudi Arabia-led military coalition intervened in Yemen in March 2015 to support Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi after Houthi rebels forced him into exile and seized much of the country's north, including the capital Sanaa.
The war grinding into its fifth year has killed more than 10,000 people, displaced 3 million others and pushed more than 20 million Yemenis into the brink of famine, according to the UN aid agencies.
UN envoy Martin Griffiths has been shuttling between the rebels in Sanaa and the Yemeni government in the Saudi capital Riyadh to push a fragile peace deal reached in Stockholm in December last year toward implementation.
