DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - Seeking to mute unprecedented criticism of Saudi Arabia's powerful religious police, a top official on Monday denied reports that they had blocked the rescue of girls trapped in a school fire because the students were not wearing the mandatory Islamic dress.
A 15-year-old girl who had been in a coma since the March 11 fire died over the weekend, the Arab News reported Monday, raising to 15 the death toll from the tragedy at the 31st Girls Middle School in Mecca, some 470 miles southeast of Riyadh.
More than 50 others were injured, while hundreds of others escaped.
Newspapers had accused members of the religious police - the Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, or muttawa - of blocking rescue attempts by male firefighters and paramedics because some of the girls were not wearing the long dresses and head coverings required in public.
But Prince Nayef, the Saudi interior minister, said newspapers had rushed to report "news which turns out to be untrue," according to Monday's Arab News, a Saudi government-controlled daily.
Two men from the religious police had arrived at last week's fire to "ensure that the girls were not subjected to any kind of mistreatment outside the building," Nayef was quoted as saying.
They "did not interfere in any other matter," he insisted.
The director of the religious police, Sheik Jaber al-Hakmi, earlier denied his people prevented rescuers from entering the school.
But the head of Mecca's police, Brig. Mohammed al-Harthy, told The Associated Press on Sunday that he arrived at the fire to find a member of the religious police "trying to interfere."
"He was fighting with a police officer, trying to prevent him from entering the school," al-Harthy said. "I immediately instructed him to leave and he did."
The religious police - charged with ensuring strict Islamic codes of behavior are followed - are routinely criticized privately in Saudi society. But last week's reports were believed to be the first time that top newspapers, most government-run, have come out with harsh words against them.
The catastrophe led to a domestic debate and an international outcry, with Amnesty International demanding a public investigation.
"If these reports are true, this is a tragic illustration of how gender discrimination can have lethal consequences," the organization said in a statement.
Nayef's comments, however, were expected to prompt Saudi papers to tone down their criticism.
"What has been said about the men of the commission (religious police) was totally baseless," the Arab News quoted Nayef as saying.
Saudi Arabia is home to Islam's holiest sites and is a beacon of the faith.
The ruling al-Saudi family pours hundreds of millions of dollars into Islamic projects every year and allows religious institutions like the muttawa to exist in return for legitimacy from a powerful establishment of Islamic scholars and leaders in the kingdom.
The zealots, who are widely feared, ensure that everyone behaves. Sexes are segregated in schools and universities, at cultural festivals, in restaurants and even at fast-food outlets, where screens separate the women's takeout lines from the men's.
In the past, members of the religious police would roam streets and shopping malls, beating women who were not covered according to Islamic teaching.
The government-run Saudi Gazette said 835 students and 55 teachers were in the building at the time of the fire, which broke out a half-hour after classes started.
In 1990, at the height of the Gulf War, religious policemen attacked American servicewomen who walked around in shorts in public in the capital, Riyadh. A complaint by the U.S. government prompted Riyadh governor Prince Salman to instruct the religious police to stop beating women for dress code violations.
Initial reports said some gates were locked because a guard who had the key was away. But newspapers quoted civil police officers, firefighters and witnesses as saying that religious police blocked the gate and refused to move even after rescuers tried to convince them that the situation was very serious.
According to the newspaper reports, most of the victims either suffocated, fell from the windows of the four-story building or were trampled to death.