Egypt: Police tear gas made soccer stadium a death trap
Feb 10, – Survivors described it as a corridor of death: a narrow route of high, chain-link security fences and barbed wire that thousands of soccer fans were filing through before entering the stadium to watch their team play.
Then, mayhem broke out. Those at the front of the line were turned back by police. Those in the back continued to press forward. Jittery police fired tear gas into the middle of the crowd, creating what survivors said was “like a whirlpool” — sucking people into a crush of bodies with no way out.
The stampede killed 22 people Sunday night at the Air Defense stadium, a military facility in an eastern suburb of Cairo, prior to the game between Egyptian Premier League clubs Zamalek and ENPPI.
The scene was all too familiar. Almost three years to the day, 74 soccer fans were killed in unprecedented stadium riot in Port Said where the Al-Masry team hosted a match with rival Al-Ahly of Cairo as police watched and failed to intervene. That Feb. 1, 2012, bloodshed prompted the cancellation of the national championship, further entrenching the hostility between police and soccer fans.
Political factions Monday called for the resignation of the interior minister, who heads the security forces. Police were criticized for incompetence and for callous disregard for life. In a further show of insensitivity, Sunday’s match went ahead despite the deaths, ending in a 1-1 tie. A Zamalek player who refused to play was punished, with the team cancelling his contract.
Many saw the violence as political — police settling scores with fans who have often clashed with security forces even before the 2011 uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak and other unrest that has followed in the country.
“I never thought they would fire tear gas here. I thought it would be impossible, and they would realize that people would for sure die,” Mahmoud, a 27-year-old survivor, told The Associated Press.
He said he climbed one of the fences to escape when a boy about 12 years old begged him to pull him up too. When he did, both tumbled back into the tangle of panicked people.
“People were fainting. Everyone stepped over the other,” said Mahmoud, who asked to be identified by only his first name for fear of police reprisal. “My luck was I was the last on the pile.”
Sunday’s match was the first Egyptian Premier League game in which fans were allowed back into the stadiums since the 2012 riot, adding to the excitement and eagerness of the fans of Zamalek, one of Egypt’s two top teams. Before Sunday, crowds had been banned from attending.
Only 10,000 tickets were distributed for the 35,000-seat stadium, but hundreds more tried to enter. The crowds had to make their way through slow security searches and the corridor of fences that led to a single, small secondary gate — not the larger main entrance.
The Interior Ministry said the violence began when fans without tickets tried to force their way in. Another survivor, a 22-year-old Zamalek fan who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared retribution, said the crowd arrived more than three hours before the match. Fans were getting agitated by the slow security searches, and the police were getting nervous, he added.
Finally, police just shut the gate and allowed no one else to enter, and they beat some at the front with sticks, he added.
Press journalist for HRO media – Khizer Hayat reports.
Category: International
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