Death by Human Stampedes

(updated 11th September 2005)

Some cases of reports relating to "crowd stampede deaths" over the years at concerts, at soccer stadiums, at religious gatherings and other events.

AT MUSIC VENUES:

Dec. 3, 1979, Cincinnati: 11 killed in a crush to get into a concert by The Who.

Aug. 29, 1980, Maseru, Lesotho: About 20 people killed in a stampede when police in the African country fired tear gas into a crowd trying to force its way into a concert by singer Steve Kekana.

Sept. 30, 1987, Mexico City: Four killed when 25,000 people waiting for a performance by Timbiriche, Flans and Fresas pushed into the concert area.

Dec. 19, 1987, Nashville, Tenn.: Two teens killed in the crush of a crowd departing from a Public Enemy concert.

Jan. 18, 1991, Salt Lake City: Three teenagers killed when the crowd at an AC-DC concert rushed the stage.

Dec. 28, 1991, New York: Eight suffocated in pileup of people trying to get into City College of New York gymnasium for charity basketball game played by rappers.

May 30, 1999, Minsk, Belarus: 53 killed when a crowd fleeing storm at a rock concert and beer festival stampeded in an underground passage.

July 1, 2000, Copenhagen, Denmark: Eight killed in crush of fans trying to get closer to Pearl Jam at an outdoor concert.

Feb. 17, 2003, Chicago: At least 21 killed at a Chicago nightclub when guests rushed to the exits after someone used Mace or pepper spray.

AT SOCCER STADIUMS:

June 23, 1968, Buenos Aires, Argentina: 74 killed when soccer fans try to leave stadium by closed exit and are crushed by others.

March 12, 1988, Katmandu, Nepal: At least 93 killed and more than 100 injured when soccer fans fleeing a hailstorm stampede into locked stadium exits.

April 15, 1989, Sheffield, England: 95 crushed to death, 400 injured when police opened gates to alleviate crowding at soccer match.

June 16, 1996, Lusaka, Zambia: Nine soccer fans crushed to death and 78 others injured during a stampede.

April 11, 2001, Johannesburg, South Africa: 43 people killed and 155 injured as fans try to push into overcrowded stadium.

25th March 2005: Five crushed to death in Iran. At least five people were crushed to death and 40 others injured after a World Cup qualifying match in Tehran, Iran. thousands of spectators rushed to the exits of the Tehran Azadi stadium on Friday night, after Iran beat Japan 2-1 in the Group B qualifying match for the 2006 World Cup finals. More than 100,000 spectators packed the stadium, and all rushed for the exits at the end of the match, causing the stampede, local doctors said. There was no reason for the rush for the doors.

AT RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS:


March 31, 2001, Multan, Pakistan: 30 people killed when crowd of worshippers surged through the gates of a shrine.

Jan 25, 2005, Wai, India. 300 trampled to death during religious festival.

Wed 6 Apr, 2005 Six die in Bangladesh Hindu festival stampede 9:32:46 GMT DHAKA (Reuters) - At lest six people have been killed and several injured in a stampede during a Hindu religious festival in Bangladesh, police say. Six people -- including four women and a child -- died when thousands of Hindu devotees rushed to take holy dip in a pool at Kasiani, about 160 miles southwest of the capital Dhaka, a police officer said on Wednesday. Thousands of Hindus are taking part in a week-long annual bathing ritual, held to celebrate the birth anniversary of medieval saint Hary Chand Thakur. Hindus make up around 10 percent Bangladesh's nearly 140 mostly Muslim people.

Wed 31st August 2005. At least 640 people have died after a railing collapsed on a bridge packed with Shiite worshippers marching in a religious procession, sending crowds tumbling into Iraq's Tigris River. The dead included women and children, a senior police official said. One survivor said panic ensued when people heard that a suicide bomber was in the crowd. Tension was running high in the crowd because of a mortar attack two hours earlier against the shrine where the marchers were heading. Iraqi Deputy Interior Minister Hussein Ali Kamal said the death toll stood at least 640 but the figure could rise. Survivors were rushed in ambulances and private cars to numerous hospitals and officials were scrambling to compile an accurate crowd. Bare-chested men swam through the muddy river looking for bodies. "We were on the bridge. It was so crowded. Thousands of people were surrounding me,'' said survivor Fadhel Ali, 28, as he stood bare footed and soaking wet after swimming from the river. "We heard that a suicide attacker was among the crowd. Everybody was yelling so I jumped from the bridge into the river, swam and reached the bank. I saw women, children and old men falling after me into the water.'' Health Minister Abdul-Mutalib Mohammed told state-run Iraqiya television that there were "huge crowds on the bridge and the disaster happened when someone shouted that there is a suicide bomber on the bridge.'' "This led to a state of panic among the pilgrims and they started to push each other and there was many cases of suffocation,'' he said. Hundreds of thousands of Shiites were marching across the bridge, which links a Sunni and Shiite neighbourhood, heading for the tomb of Imam Mousa al-Kadhim, a 9th century Shiite saint. About two hours earlier, mortar shells exploded in the shrine compound, killing at least seven people. US Apache helicopters fired at the attackers. At least six people died after drinking poisoned juice and food they received around the mosque, Dr Muhannad Jawad of the Yarmouk hospital said. After the bridge disaster, thousands of people rushed to both banks of the river searching for survivors. Hundreds of men stripped down and waded into the muddy water downstream from the bridge trying to extract bodies floating in the water. Television reports said about one million pilgrims from Baghdad and outlying provinces had gathered near the Imam Mousa al-Kadim shrine in the capital's Kazimiyah district for the annual commemoration of the Shiite saint's death. Shiite religious festivals have often been targeted for attack by Sunni extremists seeking to trigger civil war among the rival communities. In March 2004 suicide attackers struck worshippers at the Imam Kadhim shrine and a holy site in Karbala, killing at least 181 overall. The head of the country's major Sunni clerical group, the Association of Muslim Sholars, told Al-Jazeera television that the disaster was "another catastrophe and something else that could be added to the list of ongoing Iraqi tragedies.'' "On this occasion we want to express our condolences to all the Iraqis and the parents of the martyrs, who fell today in Kazimiyah and all over Iraq,'' the cleric, Haith al-Dhari, said.

OTHER STAMPEDE TRAGEDIES:

Dec. 4, 1999, Vienna, Austria: Five people trampled to death in a stampede of spectators at a snowboarding event.

Dec. 1, 2001, Gaibandha, Bangladesh: At least 31 killed in a stampede of people scrambling for charity clothes.

July 21, 2001, Akashi, Japan: 11 trampled to death when youths pushing through a crowd at a fireworks festival triggered a stampede.

9th Sept 2005 Woman Dies in Plane Stampede Maha Akeel & Mohammed Rasooldeen COLOMBO/JEDDAH, 9 September 2005 — A woman passenger was killed and dozens were injured yesterday following a stampede on board a Jeddah-bound Saudi Arabian Airlines jumbo jet after a bomb scare. The bomb alert proved a hoax. Saudi Arabian Airlines said in a statement that the pilot of Boeing 747-300 Flight SV781 from Colombo to Jeddah via Riyadh received a call from the control tower at 10 a.m. while taxiing for takeoff that there was a bomb on the plane. He immediately decided to evacuate the plane that carried 424 passengers and 19 crewmembers. The tower and airport authorities directed the pilot to take the plane to a secluded area of the airport and evacuate the plane. The captain then ordered the opening of the emergency exits and rolling out of the slides. The Sri Lankan woman who died was wearing an abaya. She hit her head on the tarmac after sliding down the escape chute, said D. Atthanayake, airport duty manager, citing preliminary inquiries. “It was a chaotic situation,” he added. “Only tomorrow morning we will be doing the post-mortem,” said Dr. SC Wickramasinghe, who runs Negombo Hospital north of the capital where four other injured were being treated. At least 19 people were admitted to nearby hospitals while 75 others suffered bruises and other minor injuries, according to air force spokesman Ajantha de Silva. Police said bomb squad officers were checking the plane, but had found nothing and believed the bomb alert was a hoax. Security authorities at the airport said they were trying to trace the caller. The stranded passengers were put up in hotels near the Colombo airport. They will be brought to the Kingdom in an alternative plane. A Saudia source told Arab News that the alternative plane departed from Jeddah at 4 p.m. (Saudi time). An airline official at the Colombo International Airport told Arab News that the alternative flight would leave Colombo at 4 a.m. (Sri Lanka time) today, and would arrive in Riyadh at 6 a.m. and at Jeddah at 8.15 a.m. The incident came a day after peace broker Norway announced it had suggested the airport, named after President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s late father and former Prime Minister Solomon Bandaranaike, as a neutral venue for talks with Tamil Tiger rebels. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam rejected the site in a statement issued to the media after the bomb hoax. — Additional input from agencies. Colombo Launches Probe Into Saudia Bomb Hoax Stampede. RIYADH, 10 September 2005 — Passengers of the Saudi Arabian Airlines Flight SV 781, on which a bomb hoax sparked a stampede at the Colombo International Airport on Thursday, arrived here in a special Saudia aircraft yesterday morning at 8.20 in Riyadh. Meanwhile, Colombo launched a full-scale investigation on the bomb hoax which triggered an emergency evacuation from the Riyadh/Jeddah bound flight Thursday afternoon. The grounded aircraft also left Colombo at 8 p.m. yesterday without passengers on board after airport authorities issued a clearance certificate for its takeoff. “We are trying to trace the call which initially came to the airport telephone operator and then connected to the control tower,” airport chief Tiran Alles said. “An investigation is under way.” Nineteen passengers who were seriously injured in the scramble to exit the Boeing 747 jetliner through emergency chutes were still in hospital yesterday, a day after the incident. A total of 62 out of the 430 passengers and 22 crew members were injured and most of them had minor bruises. Alles said they were probing the incident thoroughly. “We have had similar hoaxes in the past,” Alles said. “This is serious because a life has been lost and many more people were injured.” The airline authorities have identified the dead woman as Fatima Aboosalih, 28, from Bibile, 225 km from Colombo. She was coming for employment as a maid to a household in Jeddah. Among the arriving passengers, a Sri Lankan housewife who was coming with four children including a 1 1/2-year-old infant had lost her valuables worth SR200,000 which she claims she had put in her handbag. “When the passengers were asked to evacuate, I carried baby Fakhira immediately and asked my children to get out of the plane as quickly as possible leaving the handbag,” Farhana Faroon told Arab News. She added: “It had all my jewelry including a diamond set and Rs. 150,000 cash which I collected from the tenant of my house rented in Colombo.” Although she had minor bruises to her elbow, she opted to stay in the hotel without going to the hospital for medical treatment because she did not want to leave her children alone in the hotel. “The airline officials gave all the handbags except mine to the respective passengers when we came to the airport on the following day for the Riyadh flight,” Farhana said. Accompanying Farhana were her children Fakhira, Fariha, Fadiya and Famidha. Her husband works as an accountant at a premier food establishment in Riyadh. At the Riyadh airport, Farhana got only three of her five checked in bags and she was asked by the airport authorities to collect the rest of the luggage today presuming that the bags had been tagged to Jeddah, the final destination of the flight.  A banker who wished to remain anonymous said that the airline officials were cooperative in the emergency situation. “We were asked to remove our shoes and leave all belongings before we ventured to slide through the chutes,” he said, adding that he got even his shoes back when he came to the airport again to board the rescheduled flight. “I got all my accompanied bags, thanks to Saudia,” he said. Mohammed Najeeb and Mohammed Izmi who work for King Faisal School in Riyadh said they did not get their bags and were asked to come the following day to collect them. A senior official from the Saudi Arabian Airlines in Colombo told Arab News that all the passengers had identified their bags at the Colombo airport before loading. “There is no chance of bags getting lost, perhaps some could have been dispatched to Jeddah in an emergency situation of this nature. In such a case, they will be diverted to Riyadh again,” he added. He confirmed that Farhana had lodged a formal complaint in Colombo and had been assured that the airline would do its best to look into the matter. Saudi ambassador in Colombo, Mohamed Mahmud Al-Ali was also on the flight but he escaped injury. He was on his way to attend the funeral of his father and got a SriLankan flight later though he was able to take only his hand luggage. “It was a long journey. I took a flight to Abu Dhabi and then to Madinah and finally I reached Tabuk in time for the funeral,” Al-Ali told Arab News. Saudia Bomb Hoax Call Originated From Airport Mohammed Rasooldeen, Arab News RIYADH, 13 September 2005 — Preliminary investigations indicate that the hoax phone call last Thursday saying that a bomb was on board Saudi Arabian Airlines Flight SV781 originated from within Colombo’s Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA). There was no bomb but during the emergency evacuation of the aircraft, one Sri Lankan woman died and 74 other passengers were injured. A special two-man team from the Kingdom is currently in Colombo to assist with the investigation. According to information obtained by Arab News from Colombo, the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder have been handed over to Kingdom officials. “We do not have facilities in Sri Lanka to read the recordings in these machines,” H.M.C. Nimalasiri, Sri Lanka’s director general of aviation, told Arab News. The Saudia team of Abdullah Al-Salem and Ghazi Al-Taifi held talks Saturday with the director general. The director general said, “Saudia crew deserve a special word of praise since they responded promptly to the signal from the airport control tower for emergency evacuation.” He pointed out that the injuries were mainly due to panic among the passengers who were trying frantically to slide down the chutes. He said the SriLankan airlines emergency team at the airport also did a commendable job in assisting the passengers to evacuate the aircraft. The dead woman, Fathima Nazeema, mother of six, first came to work in Saudi Arabia about eight years ago. A Saudia official said that the airline had paid her funeral expenses and appropriate compensation would be paid to the next-of-kin according to IATA regulations.
 

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