After leaving a New Year's fireworks show early Tuesday in Ivory Coast's main city, a crowd was stampeded, killing 61 people — many of them children and teenagers — and injuring more than 200, rescue workers said.
Thousands had gathered at the Felix Houphouet Boigny Stadium in Abidjan's Plateau district to see the fireworks. It was only the second New Year's Eve fireworks display since peace returned to this West African nation after a bloody upheaval over presidential elections put the nation on the brink of civil war and turned this city into a battle zone.
Many of the younger ones in the crowd went down, trampled underfoot. Most of those killed were between 8 and 15 years old
"The flood of people leaving the stadium became a stampede which led to the deaths of more than 60 and injured more than 200," Sako told Ivory Coast state TV.
Desperate parents went to the city morgue, the hospital and to the stadium to try to find missing children. Mamadou Sanogo was searching for his 9-year-old son, Sayed.
"I have just seen all the bodies, but I cannot find my son," said a tearful Sanogo. "I don't know what to do."
State TV showed a woman sobbing in the back of an ambulance; another was bent over on the side of the street, apparently in pain; and another, barely conscious and wearing only a bra on her upper body, was hoisted by rescuers. There were also scenes of small children being treated in a hospital. One boy grimaced in pain and a girl with colored braids in her hair lay under a blanket with one hand bandaged. The death toll could rise, officials said.
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