April 20--REPORTING FROM SANA, Yemen -- The death toll grew to 46 following an airstrike Monday on Sana by the Saudi-led military coalition that set of a series of enormous explosions in the capital, injuring hundreds more people and wrecking a large number of homes, officials said.
The blast, apparently targeting a mountaintop missile depot, terrified city dwellers already traumatized by more than three straight weeks of bombardment and raised new questions about both the efficacy and human cost of the Saudi-led air campaign.
The Saudi offensive, launched March 25, was aimed at stemming the swift advance of Shiite Muslim rebels known as Houthis, who have overrun large swaths of the country. But the fighting has caused hundreds of civilian casualties, and Yemen's Al Qaeda affiliate has seized the opportunity to consolidate its own gains.
The Saudis have described the air war as making steady progress against the rebels and elements of Yemen's army that have sided with the insurgents. Humanitarian groups, however, describe a growing calamity across what was already the Arab world's poorest country as food, fuel, power and medical supplies run short. Street fighting continues to rock the country's main commercial hub, the southern port city of Aden.
A spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition, Brig. Gen. Ahmed Asiri, suggested that the airstrike's effect might have been magnified by additional weapons stockpiling at the site by the Houthis and their allies.
"The size of the explosions ... showed they have other ammunition and missiles stored there," Asiri told reporters in Riyadh, the Saudi capital.
In Sana, where many families spend days cowering inside darkened homes, the latest destruction was too much for some to bear. Essa Hadi, who lives close to the site of Monday's explosion, said his home was so badly damaged that "I do not think I will be able to fix it, not in a hundred years."
His children, he said, were already sick and frightened -- and now the family was homeless. "I do not have any place to go," Hadi said, nearly weeping.
The force of the explosions shattered windows miles away, wrecked dozens of storefronts and sent smoke billowing skyward and black soot drifting down into the streets. The acting health minister, Ghazi Ismael, appealed for blood donations to help the injured and for safe passage of medical supplies, and the ministry said its official death toll of 46 would likely rise with the number of criticial injuries.
Hospitals were swiftly overwhelmed, and fuel shortages forced some injured to beg rides for medical treatment. Hours after the explosion, with warplanes still circling overhead, rescue workers dug through rubble, searching for survivors.
The United States has been assisting the Saudi-led coalition, and errant strikes have roused popular fury directed at both. Humanitarian groups say mosques, factories, homes and hospitals have been damaged by the fighting. On Sunday, the British relief group Oxfam said one of its storage facilities northwest of the capital had been bombed.
The Yemen conflict has heightened regional sectarian tensions that are already fueling several other Mideast conflicts. Saudi Arabia, a Sunni Muslim nation, says Shiite-dominated Iran has armed the Houthi rebels, who are mainly adherents of the Shiite offshoot Zaydi sect. Iran denied providing weaponry to the insurgents.
Special correspondent Al-Alayaa reported from Sana and staff writer King from Cairo.
UPDATES
11;15 a.m.: This article has been updated with comment from Brig. Gen. Ahmed Asiri of Saudi Arabia.
9:40 a.m.: This article has been updated with a higher death toll.
The article was originally published at 7:02 a.m.
