The Ivory Coast on Wednesday began three days of national mourning after
a stampede among crowds gathered for celebratory New Year’s Eve
fireworks in Abidjan left at least 60 dead and dozens injured. An
AFP journalist saw many injured children, while images broadcast by RTI
television showed bodies stretched lifeless on the ground outside the
city’s main stadium. Piles of abandoned shoes and clothing could
also be seen at the stadium, where soldiers and police were deployed,
along with UN peacekeepers.
“This is a real tragedy on this New Year’s Day,” President Alassane Ouattara said at the scene. “We are all in shock,” he added, announcing that three days of national mourning would be held starting on Wednesday. The
government said 60 people had died, with an average age of 18. Earlier,
the head of military rescue workers, Lieutenant Colonel Issa Sako, told
journalists that 61 had died. “Forty-nine wounded were
evacuated” by rescue workers, Sako said, adding that other injured
victims had gone to hospital on their own.
Another rescue official said
at least 200 people had been wounded in all. Sako said the flow
of people at the stadium had caused a “very large crush” and that “in
the crush, people were walked over and suffocated by the crowd.” Officials said around 50,000 people had gathered for the fireworks. Witnesses
said the stampede had broken out after the fireworks ended, though the
cause remains unclear. It erupted near the stadium’s main entrance,
where security had set up tree trunks as crowd control barriers.
According to a police source, the crush occurred when two streams of spectators going in opposite directions crossed paths. A security source added that rescue services “took some time to arrive.” Interior
Minister Hamed Bakayoko said the “exact circumstances” of the tragedy
are “under investigation by the security services.” Visibly
shaken children were among the roughly 40 wounded taken to a hospital in
the wealthy neighborhood of Cocody, in the north of the economic
capital.
A mother named Zeinab who had taken two of her children
to the stadium found one of them in the hospital, a small boy who lay on
a bed in a groggy state. Zeinab said she “hurt all over” and showed a journalist the scratches on her body. “I
don’t know what happened but I found myself lying on the ground with
people stepping on me, pulling my hair or tearing my clothes,” she said. She said she had been knocked unconscious and that a young man had pulled her from the crowd.
The
New Year’s fireworks, the city’s second in two years, had been touted
as a symbol of national renewal under Ouattara after a violent
post-election crisis that tore the country apart from December 2010 to
April 2011, killing some 3,000 people. The unrest began after Ouattara’s long-time rival and former iron-fisted ruler Laurent Gbagbo refused to step down. He
was later arrested by forces loyal to Ouattara, with UN and French
military backing, and transferred to the International Criminal Court in
The Hague, where he is accused of crimes against humanity.
Though
the troubled west African nation — the world’s top cocoa producer — is
still recovering from the political and military crisis, Ouattara had
struck a note of optimism in a New Year’s message on Monday evening. He
said the former French colony had “possibilities like seldom before”
ahead of it, promising it would soon reap the rewards of economic growth
and development.
Agence France-Presse
Agence France-Presse
source : the jakarta globe
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar