Deaths from crush at New Year’s Eve fireworks display has risen to 62 as scores of injured go to hospital. The death toll after the New Year’s Eve stampede in Ivory Coast has risen to 62 as injured people continue to arrive in hospital in the commercial capital, Abidjan. Witnesses said seven people were still missing and five bodies remained unidentified as emergency services continued their work in the aftermath of the tragedy at the main football stadium in the centre of Abidjan.
“Yesterday there was a lack of information and many injured people went home,” said Mohamed Diaby, a social entrepreneur who is part of a citizens’ action group set up after the disaster. “We asked injured people this morning to come back to the hospital and now they are arriving in their dozens.”
The Ivory Coast president, Alassane Ouattara, visited injured people at the Cocody hospital in Abidjan on Tuesday and said an investigation had begun. Details are still coming to light about the tragedy, which occurred after a fireworks display that was meant to celebrate Ivory Coast’s return to peace after a 2011 civil war. Government officials said many of the dead were children aged between eight and 15. Rescue workers, who reached the scene quickly on Monday night, said they found people trampled and suffocated as a crowd of thousands was crushed trying to leave the area around the Félix Houphouët-Boigny stadium.
Local newspapers reported that the roadblocks were set up by criminal gangs trying to steal money and mobile phones.
Other witnesses blamed security forces who arrived to break up the crowd, triggering a panic in which many people fell and were trampled, and the failure of the authorities to manage a collision between a large crowd trying to leave the festivities and another group arriving at the same time. Concerns have been raised that an official investigation would be hampered by the removal of evidence from the scene. “At first people were sad, but now they are angry and I am not sure that the investigation will tell us anything,” said Diaby. “I have been on the ground in the days since this happened, and I saw that all the things that could explain what happened have been removed.”
“How can you have an investigation when all evidence has been removedfrom the scene?”