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22 fans killed in crush to watch Premiership stars
Ed Harris30.03.09
AT LEAST 22 football fans were killed and 130 were injured in a stadium stampede before a World Cup qualifying match in Ivory Coast.
There were reports that more than 60,000 people had packed into the 36,000-seater arena in the city of Abidjan for the game against Malawi after a gate was torn down. Many of the fans were desperate to see Premiership stars including Chelsea's Didier Drogba.
The increasing crush caused panic and a wall is said to have collapsed creating a sudden surge in which supporters were trampled underfoot or suffocated in the press of bodies.
Police fired tear gas in a desperate attempt to hold the crowd back but it only added to the confusion at the Felix Houphouet-Boigny arena. "We saw people falling. Then there was panic and a stampede," said Ollo Kambire, a reporter for Super Sport, a daily newspaper.
Interior minister Desire Tagro said: "Lots of fans showed up. They started pushing to get in because the match was about to start and each and every one of them wanted to get in." The authorities decided that the match should go on despite the tragedy and Ivory Coast won 5-0. The stadium was sold out in advance after cut-price tickets went on sale but thousands more fans turned up.
Ivory Coast's sports minister, Dagobert Banzio, said: "Spectators who did not buy tickets were jostling before the match. They smashed one of the main gates of the stadium."
Other Premiership players in yesterday's game for Ivory Coast included Chelsea's Salomon Kalou, as well as Kolo Toure and Emmanuel Eboue of Arsenal and Tottenham's Didier Zokora.
Football's governing body Fifa instigated a programme of inspections across Africa before the 2010 World Cup qualifiers and Abidjan's stadium had been passed as safe. The finals are to be held in South Africa.
There have been a number of stampedes at Africa's crowded and often poorly-built stadiums. Last September 11 people were killed in a stadium riot in the Democratic Republic of Congo and in June eight people died in a crush in Liberia.
