Toll 120 in soccer tragedy

By Kwaku Sakyi-Addo

Africa suffered its worst football disaster ever, and its third in a month, when at least 120 people were killed in a stampede at a soccer match in Ghana.

Spectators said the crowd stampeded when police fired teargas after fans hurled missiles near the end of a game on Wednesday between Accra team Hearts of Oak and arch-rivals Asante Kotoko from the central town of Kumasi.

"Some died of suffocation but the majority seem to have been killed by being crushed," said Brigadier Daniel Twum of the 37 military hospital where most of the dead and injured were taken after the stampede.

President John Kufuor, clearly very shaken by the tragedy during a visit to the injured, told Reuters simply "this is really sad". One of his officials said Kufuor screamed when he first heard the news.

Twum said 102 dead were brought to the military hospital and officials at two other hospitals confirmed a further 18 dead. He said another 50 people had been injured, but most were not in a serious condition.

TEARGAS FIRED IN PACKED STADIUM

Witnesses said that with Hearts of Oak leading 2-1 after two quick goals near the end of the game, Asante Kotoko fans began tearing up plastic chairs and throwing chunks onto the pitch.

Police reacted by firing teargas into the packed stadium which has a capacity of 50,000.

"There was a mad rush out of the stadium," spectator Mohamed Anwar told Reuters.

"There was smoke and there was debris, and I counted at least 15 people lying on the floor in one part of the stadium. Some were injured and apparently some were dead.

"People who fell were lying on the floor. You could see that they were clearly dead."

Wails of anguish echoed around the stadium as scores of bodies piled up from Africa's third football disaster in the last month and the worst in its history.

On April 11, 43 soccer fans were crushed to death when fans tried to force their way into Johannesburg's huge Ellis Park stadium midway through a top South African league match.

At least seven people were killed and 51 seriously injured in an April 30 stampede in the Democratic Republic of Congo after police moved to break up rioting at a match in Lubumbashi.

BITTER RIVALS

Bitter rivalry has long marked games between Hearts of Oak and Asante Kotoko, two of the biggest names in football on a soccer-mad continent.

Hearts of Oak's following is from the coastal capital Accra. Kotoko draws its support from the old Ashanti kingdom where Kufuor, at one time Kotoko's club chairman, has his roots.

Fears of trouble at one of the first matches in the league this season had meant there was a heavy police presence at the Accra Sports' Stadium.

Harry Zakour, chief executive of Hearts of Oak, criticised police for firing up to a dozen teargas canisters in the stadium.

"One would have been enough to scare the public," he told Reuters. "It's a very sad story. We will have to set up a committee to see what went wrong".

Africa, which hopes to host the 2010 World Cup despite concerns over stadium safety, has suffered repeated tragedy over the past decade as a result of soccer violence.

Thirteen people died last year in a stadium stampede in Zimbabwe after police fired teargas at a World Cup qualifier between Zimbabwe and South Africa.

In 1996, at least seven people were killed during a stampede at a Zambia-Sudan World Cup qualifiers' match in Lusaka.

Forty people died outside Johannesburg in 1991 after being crushed against a stadium fence, trampled underfoot or stabbed as thousands of fans surged towards a jammed exit to escape rival brawling spectators.