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| Photo Credit: AP. |
GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — At least nine people died and some 20 were injured in a stampede in Guatemala early Thursday as the country celebrated its independence, according to firefighters.
The concert
was sponsored by a beer maker and held on a field often used for such events.
While the Guatemalan rock band Bohemia Suburbana closed the show, some
concertgoers were crushed as some tried to leave as others were entering the
same place.
Nancy Quemé,
who was at the concert, said there had been thousands of people there. “Because
of the rain there was a lot of mud,” she said. “I think because of this the
people couldn’t move and they fell.”
The lineup
of bands had started playing Wednesday afternoon. She said that even in the
early hours of Thursday there were still families with children there.
“They closed
off the whole area and only left two access (points),” Quemé said. “The
entrances seemed really small to me. I stayed pretty far back and decided to
leave minutes before the end of the concert.”
Video
circulating on social media platforms shows dozens of people smashing into
others. Shouts can be heard called for people to stop pushing and to move to
one side so those who fell could be rescued.
Amilcar
Rivas, Quetzaltenango city manager, said that event organizers did not have a
grip on security and crowd control. He said the event did have a permit.
Quetzaltenango,
which holds Guatemala’s second largest independence celebration, is about 125
miles (200 kms) west of Guatemala City.
Guatemala is
celebrating Thursday 201 years of independence from Spain.