Scores killed in Ivory Coast fireworks stampede

About 60 people have been
crushed to death in a stampede
outside a stadium in Ivory Coast's
main city of Abidjan after a New
Year's Eve fireworks display.
The incident took place near Félix
Houphouët-Boigny stadium where
a crowd had gathered to watch
fireworks, emergency officials
said. One of the injured at a
hospital said security forces had
arrived to break up the crowd,
triggering a panic in which many
people fell over and were
trampled.
Other reports said the crush
happened when thousands of
people who were trying to leave
the festivities met another large
crowd arriving at the same time.
"The provisional death toll is 60
and there are 49 injured," the
interior minister, Hamed
Bakayoko, said in a statement on
national television. "During the
fireworks everything was
proceeding normally," Bakayoko
said. "At the end of it people
wanted to go home, back to their
home districts.
"Near the Hotel Tiama and the
Houphouët-Boigny stadium there
was a stampede. We were notified
of injuries and deaths, and as
regards casualties, we learnt that
there was a heavy toll. The
circumstances surrounding the
incident will form the subject of
an investigation."
President Alassane Ouattara,
visiting injured people at the
hospital, called the incident a
national tragedy and said an
investigation was under way to
determine what had happened.
A Reuters correspondent said
bloodstains and abandoned shoes
littered the scene outside the
stadium on Tuesday morning.
Assetou Toure, a cleaner, said:
"My two children came here
yesterday. I told them not to come
but they didn't listen. They came
when I was sleeping. What will I
do?" She did not know if her
children had escaped unhurt.
According to the Associated Press
a state radio and a fire
department rescue worker,
estimated that an additional 200
people were injured. The
emergency worker said a crowd of
thousands gathered at the
Houphouët-Boigny Stadium to see
the fireworks and after the display
the crowds in the street became a
crush in which people were
trampled.
The incident was the worst of its
kind in Abidjan since 2010, when a
stampede at a stadium during a
football match killed 18 people.
Ivory Coast, once a stable
economic hub for west Africa, is
struggling to recover from the
2011 civil war in which more than
3,000 people were killed.