SA doctors fight to save injured from stampede

South African doctors battled through the night to save the lives of several children critically injured in a stampede that killed at least 43 people during a soccer match in Johannesburg.

Doctors said a number of children were among at least 58 people brought by helicopters, ambulances, taxis and private cars to Johannesburg hospitals following the stampede on Wednesday.

An unknown number of children were among at least eight people listed in a critical condition in three hospitals early on Thursday.

Police spokesman Chris Wilken confirmed 43 men, women and children were killed when crowds broke down gates and surged into the stadium midway through the Premier League game between top teams Orlando Pirates and Kaizer Chiefs.

Witnesses said teargas was fired, apparently by private security officials, in a vain effort to halt the crowd surging into the stadium.

A correspondent counted 43 bodies lined up on a sidewalk outside the stadium and on the pitch inside, but police spokeswoman Amanda Roestoff said some reports put the toll as high as 47.

It was the worst accident in South African sports history, surpassing a stampede in 1991 in which 42 people died during a match between the same two teams in the mining town of Orkney.

Witnesses said that fans arrived, many with tickets, to find the stadium overflowing and the gates closed. Some reports said 120,000 people were admitted to the stadium built for a maximum of 70,000.

A policeman said tempers flared when league-leaders Orlando Pirates equalised at one-all about 30 minutes into the first half. The crowd pressed against a gate, which collapsed, trapping several people under the mesh while spectators rushed across it to get in.

"I was pushed from behind. The next thing I knew I was down and somebody who was next to me bit my hand. I later learned that that person died," Orlando Pirates fan Ernest Sibane, 27, said at a nearby hospital where he was being treated for a foot injury.

Security guard Petrus Saayman said he saw one teenage girl trapped by the neck between bars of two gates.

"I saw a girl stuck inside the gates and as they pushed I think the girl's neck was broken," he said. Saayman said he pulled her lifeless body from the gate and laid it down on the ground.

GOVERNMENT, OFFICIALS TO MEET

Sports Minister Ngconde Balfour, who rushed to the scene from a meeting nearby, said the government would meet on Thursday with clubs, the Professional Soccer League, the South African Football Association and the stadium's owners to work out what had happened.

"When I got to the stadium the scene that greeted me there was tragic. It is something that will be with me for years to come. When I went over to see the bodies of those who died there...I, I just don't know what to say," he told state television.

President Thabo Mbeki said through a spokesman he had watched at home as the drama unfolded on television, adding: "An urgent inquiry will have to be held to ensure this doesn't happen again."

Officials asked the crowd to stay in their seats after the match was halted in the 33rd minute, saying police would secure their route out.

Spectators stood and watched largely in disbelieving silence as emergency services staff used advertising boards as makeshift stretchers and laid the dead and injured out on the pitch.

The dead were covered first with newspaper and scraps of clothing and later with red blankets as paramedics and doctors worked to stablise the injured. Helicopters ferried the seriously injured to hospitals.

Orlando Pirates chairman Irwin Khoza told the crowd shortly before the gates were opened to let them leave: "We apologise most profusely. May God let them rest in peace."