Sana'a School Shooting

The Sana'a school shooting was a school shooting that occurred in Sana'a, Yemen, on March 30, 1997. 48-year-old Mohammad Ahman al-Nazari – who had fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan – began his rampage at Tala'i Private School in the Asbahi township. Armed with an illegally obtained Kalashnikov assault rifle, he waited for the headmistress and killed her by shooting her in the head. After killing a cafeteria worker and injuring a bus driver who came to help he entered the school building and walked from classroom to classroom, shooting indiscriminately at teachers and students. Subsequently he went to nearby Musa Bin Nusayr School where he continued his rampage, that left a total of six people dead and 12 others wounded, before he himself was injured and arrested.

Nazari, whose five children attended the Tala'i school, alleged that one of his daughters had been raped by the school administrator. No evidence was found of this. Nazari had been a bus driver for the two schools, but was fired for unknown reasons some time before the shooting.

After being declared sane, Nazari, whose name was also reported as being Hassan Ali al-Baadani or Muhammad Ahmad al-Naziri, was sentenced to death the next day for killing a headmistress, a teacher, a cafeteria worker, a bystander and two students and executed with five shots in the chest in an empty lot between the two schools on April 5, 1997. An initial sentence to nail his body on a cross for three days was repealed.

After his execution, Nazari's body was kicked to a pulp by angry citizens and burned. His daughters fought the courts against the execution but lost. The daughter who was allegedly raped committed suicide five years later; the other four children all died in a train accident in 2006.