2023-08-26 07:42:35
At least twelve people were killed on Friday in Madagascar in a stampede at the entrance to a packed stadium in the capital for the opening of a sports competition in the Indian Ocean islands.
Published on : Modified :
2 mn
The sporting event turned into a tragedy. At least twelve people were killed Friday in Madagascar in a stampede at the entrance to a stadium in the capital, packed for the opening of a sports competition in the islands of the Indian Ocean.
The stampede occurred outside one of the entrances to Barea Stadium in Antananarivo, where a crowd of some 50,000 spectators had come to witness the launch of the eleventh Indian Ocean Island Games.
A report, still provisional, was announced by the Prime Minister, Christian Ntsay, who went to the hospital in the capital where the wounded were taken, and reported twelve dead and some 80 injured.
According to the Red Cross on site, seven minors are among the victims.
“Seven children died, two boys and five girls,” Antsa Mirado, a communications official, told AFP.
“There were a lot of people at the entrance, which started a stampede,” he added.
Full bleachers
The rescuers drew up a first list of the wounded. According to the document consulted by AFP, the people who were taken care of are aged between 5 and 70 years old. Among them, many teenagers.
Present at the sports ceremony which opened around 2:00 p.m. GMT, President Andry Rajoelina called for a minute of silence.
“We are around 50,000 in the stadium,” said the head of state in a speech broadcast on television. But “a tragic event occurred because there were jostling. There were injuries and deaths at the entrance”.
In the streets around the enclosure, some were trying to find their shoes in a pile of objects probably lost in the crush, according to television images.
Other footage from inside the stadium, shared on social media, showed stands packed with spectators.
The Indian Ocean Island Games are a multidisciplinary competition held this year in Madagascar until September 3. They have been organized every four years, in different islands in the south-west of the Indian Ocean, for regarding forty years. The previous edition took place in Mauritius.
The Barea stadium, the largest on the island of around 28 million inhabitants, had already been the scene of a similar incident in 2019.
At least sixteen people were killed and dozens more injured during a concert organized on the occasion of the national holiday. Three children were among the victims.
In 2016, the explosion of a homemade bomb on Independence Day left three dead and a hundred injured, still in the same Barea stadium.
With AFP
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