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| Arabia |
| Heavy Blasts at Aden Arms Depot Kill at Least 9 |
| 2015-03-29 |
| [AnNahar] A series of kabooms rocked an arms depot in Yemen's second city of Aden Saturday, killing at least nine people as looters swarmed the facility, witnesses and an official said. The blasts were heard across the city and pillars of smoke rose from the depot, where looting had broken out a day earlier, an AFP correspondent reported. The depot is at the foot of Jabal Hadid mountain overlooking the port, and a large amount of weapons dating back to the Soviet era were stored in a cave there. Troops guarding the depot abandoned their posts this week after their commanders fled as chaos tightened its grip on the war-torn country. Houses shook, windows were shattered and several nearby buildings were destroyed in Saturday's kabooms, residents said. "We have so far retrieved nine charred bodies," health department director Al-Kheder Lassouar said. "We have information that there are more bodies inside that we were not able to reach" as kabooms continued after people entered the depot to loot it, he added. Many people were inside or on Jabal Hadid when the kabooms took place, witnesses said, reporting that several had died in the looting even before the blasts. One resident who was at the mountain earlier on Saturday before the kabooms told AFP that "there were many dead bodies in the cave". "People entering to take weapons were killed by others who didn't find what they were looking for," he said. Others reported seeing several people die of suffocation after inhaling toxic gases released from gunpowder stored inside the deep cave. Several others were stabbed, residents say. AFP could not confirm these reports from official sources as fighting between local militias and Iranian catspaws, under fire from a Saudi-led coalition elsewhere, killed 61 people in three days, according to Lassouar. President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi took refuge in Aden after fleeing the rebel-held capital last month. He left this week for Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... before heading to Egypt for an Arab League ...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing... summit expected to be dominated by the Yemen ...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of. Except for a tiny handfull of Jews everthing there is very Islamic... crisis. |
| Posted by:trailing wife |