Uíge, ANGOLA
VIJAY SHAH via BBC News
The BBC reported yesterday that 17 people have been killed after a stampede at a football stadium in the town of Uíge in Angola, according to local officials.
Hundreds of injuries, of which five people were seriously injured, from the crush have also been reported, after fans rushed the stadium entrance after they were prevented from entering. Many of the deaths resulted from people falling to the ground or being trapped, then suffocated, according to a medic on the scene.
The stadium, in the north of Angola was hosting a match between Santa Rita de Cassia, the home team and visiting side Recreativo do Libolo. The match was so sought after that the venue quickly filled to its 8,000 seat capacity, when more fans began to show up at the gates demanding entry. They were prevented from entering the stadium as it was full. As people began to storm the gates, fatalities started mounting.
Ernesto Luis, the general director of Uíge’s main hospital, told the Reuters news agency that “Some people had to walk on top of other people. There were 76 casualties, of whom 17 died,”
Recreativo do Libolo released a statement regarding the incident on their website, stating that it was “a tragedy without precedent in the history of Angolan football”.
One eyewitness, named by the BBC as Domingos Vika, reported that the stadium’s entrance was already overcrowded, when more fans began ‘pouring in’ sparking the crush.
“When they gave the opportunity for everyone to come in, we were all packed at the gate,” said Mr Vika, who left the venue with a broken hand.
Angola’s President Jose Eduardo dos Santos has ordered an investigation into the incident, local media have reported.
halfeatenmind.wordpress.com 
Absolutely a tragedy! Fans out for a day of fun fall victim to poor crowd management.
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Exactly… and this reminds me of the Hillsbrough disaster of the 1980s, similar circumstances…
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How awful
The force of a crowd is truly astonishing. In my youth (in the 70’s) concert venues would sell tickets as “festival seating” (in other words, seating first come first served) which always resulted in gate crashing situations. I felt the pressure of a relentless crowd pushing me into closed doors until the flow of bodies allowed me to pass through the open portal. Quite scary. Of course this practice was short lived due to the resultant casualties; particularly following the tragic events of that infamous1979 Who concert in 1979.
I have always equated the feeling of being in the middle of a stampede of human beings to what it must have felt like to be a soldier amidst a medieval siege mob.
Truly a shame civility has not yet risen to the point where these sorts of tragedies become relegated to history books.
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For me, this would be like the seventh circle of hell. That encroaching and suffocating fear of being crushed, of an ‘animal mentality’ (if you can call it that) taking hold of otherwise sane people, and it become a classic situation of every man, woman and child for themselves. Definitely they should find a way of teaching crowd control and management to all these venues for concerts, sports matches and stuff. There should be some sort of compulsory training programme and code they all have to sign up to, but that’s probably wishful thinking.
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*that infamous1979 Who concert in Cincinnati.
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