12 killed in Soccer stadium stampede in El Salvador
May 21, 2023
San Salvador [El Salvador], May 21 : The death toll in the El Salvador soccer stadium stamped has increased to 12 and about 90 others were injured, The New York Times reported citing the authorities.
The authorities, giving details about the case and the progress of the investigation, said that the audience may have caused the stadium's Wi-Fi to malfunction leading to problems with QR codes on the ticket and resulting in people being stuck at the southern gate of the stadium.
The authorities further stated that due to the ticketing problem, the queue became long and some fans had also forced their way into the stadium through the southern gate, where those who buy cheaper tickets typically enter.
This highly anticipated match turned into a chaotic scene as fans rushed to save people suffocating under a mass of bodies, according to The New York Times.
He added that they would also investigate ticket sales for the game. Local news organizations have raised questions about whether too many tickets had been sold for the match.
Soccer matches around the world have for decades been the scenes of deadly stadium disasters, sometimes set off by crowd violence and often made worse by inept police responses that result in spectators being crushed as they try to flee. In Malang, Indonesia, last October, at least 125 people died, many of them trampled, after the police fired tear gas in an effort to disperse crowds.
Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, said in a statement that "everyone will be investigated: teams, managers, stadium, ticket office, league, federation, etc."
"Whoever the culprits are," he said, "they will not go unpunished."
The tumult appears to have started about 20 minutes into the game when the teams remained tied, The New York Times reported.
On a live stream of the match posted on YouTube, game commentators said they could see some type of commotion in the stands, noting that some people appeared to have lost consciousness. Fans eventually stepped onto the field, and the game was suspended, the commentators said in the live stream, as per the report in The New York Times.
