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Mass New Year celebrations were marred by the death of at least nine people in a stampede at a shopping mall south of the capital, Kampala.
Nine people, including some minors, died and several more were injured in a stampede that occurred during a New Year’s celebration in Kampala, the capital of Uganda – a country in the African Great Lakes region – according to police sources.
The stampede came after a round of fireworks was launched in front of the Freedom City shopping center in the south of the capital, said Luke Owoyesigyire, spokesman for the national police. Five people died at the scene and “many others” were injured, the officer said in a statement.
“Rescue teams arrived at the scene and took the injured to hospital,” he said, adding that four of the injured died of suffocation on the way to the hospital, bringing the death toll to nine.
Owoyesigyire also specified that among the victims there were “young people” and denounced “carelessness and negligence”, without giving more details about the circumstances of the tragedy.
Most of the victims were “young people aged 10, 11, 14 and 20,” Kampala Police spokesman Patrick Onyango told the AFP news agency.
“There are several victims and our investigation team is following up to get the exact number and full details of the deceased and we are contacting their relatives,” he said.
“At one point I felt like I was losing my breath”
The stampede “started when we went to see the fireworks,” Sylvia Nakalema, a 27-year-old businesswoman from Kampala, told AFP.
“There were a large number of people. People began to push each other (…), which caused some to fall. Children were crying and it was chaos,” he continued. “I survived because the crowd pushed me into a corner. At one point I felt I was losing my breath (…), and I couldn’t get out until the situation calmed down. But some people were already on the ground unable to breathe,” Nakalema added.
In images broadcast by the Ugandan television channel ‘NTV’, several bereaved families were gathered in front of a mortuary in the capital.
In 2009, one person was killed and three others injured in a stampede outside an amusement park in Kansanga, a town near the capital, Kampala.
Those celebrations were the first of the New Year in Uganda, after three years of restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic.
with AFP
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