Yemen blast kills up to 19, levels apartment block

SANAA (Reuters) - A suspected dynamite blast in the basement of a residential building in Yemen killed up to 19 people as they slept Tuesday and leveled their apartment block, an official said.

"We think it was dynamite," an official in the southern city of Taiz told Reuters.

He said the dynamite was thought to have belonged to a Yemeni contractor who used explosives in road building works to flatten hills and who may have stored it in the building.

The official said the explosion before dawn caused the collapse of a three-storey building with six residential apartments, and partly destroyed two adjacent homes. At least nine bodies were pulled from the rubble and rescue workers were looking for 10 more believed buried and feared dead.

Taiz province governor, Hammoud al-Sufi, put the death toll lower at 10 and said he did not believe more victims were trapped under the rubble.

Some 15 people also were injured in the blast.

Initial findings gave no indication the explosion was anything other than an accident, the official said.

Western governments and neighboring Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter, fear Yemen could become a failed state in which al Qaeda could exploit instability to recruit and train militants to launch attacks in the region and beyond.

In addition to fighting al Qaeda, Yemen is also trying to bring an end to a northern Shi'ite rebellion while also facing simmering separatist sentiment in the south, where tensions have escalated in recent weeks.

(Reporting by Mohamed Sudam in Sanaa and Tamara Walid in Dubai; Writing by Cynthia Johnston; Editing by Angus MacSwan)