Several Christmas Celebrations Around the World Marred by Violence

Despite the biblical injunction that peace and goodwill should prevail as Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus, the holiday was marred in several parts of the world by deaths and injuries.

In the Peruvian capital, Lima, nine young revelers died at a Christmas party early Friday when a teargas canister thrown into an overcrowded nightclub sparked a stampede, police said.

The victims, between 12 and 21 years old, were crushed to death or suffocated as about 250 party-goers celebrating Christmas at the Suarez nightclub on the impoverished outskirts of the city tried to flee the choking gas.

Police said another eight people were badly injured in the club, which was filled to double its capacity for Peru’s traditional Christmas Eve celebrations--when thousands of young people go to late-night parties and take to the streets with fireworks.

Police said they did not know who threw the teargas canister, but witnesses told local radio station Radioprogramas that it was members of a youth gang.

“There was no space to leave the discotheque. The staircase was narrow, and the teenagers were desperate to leave. It was almost a jail,” said Elcides Espejo, the father of one of the victims.

In South Africa, eight celebrants, including three from the same family, were shot dead by a group of armed men that had been refused entry to a Christmas Eve party in troubled KwaZulu-Natal province, police said.

A police spokesman said at least two men unknown to the hosts demanded to gate-crash family festivities at a home in the Indian Ocean town of Margate late Thursday night but were turned away.

“The group then started to fire shots randomly at the guests,” the spokesman said.

The seven men and one women killed were between 18 and 43 years old. Two party-goers were wounded, and five escaped unhurt. Police were searching for the gunmen.

Carbon monoxide fumes from a faulty heating system, meanwhile, sickened more than 200 people celebrating Christmas Eve Mass at a church in a French village, sending 50 to the hospital.

The worshipers and the priest suffered headaches, nausea and vomiting as the Thursday evening service ended in Saverdun, a village in the southwestern Ariege region, officials said.

A doctor in the congregation recognized the symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning and called for help. A crisis center was set up in the village hall, where throughout the night 217 worshipers were treated with oxygen.

Fifty people, including young children and a pregnant woman, were hospitalized in nearby Toulouse and other towns, according to regional prefect Philippe Zeller, who said police blamed the fumes on a broken heater.

And during Christmas celebrations in Argentina, about 390 people were hurt, many by fireworks, the state news agency Telam reported Friday.

In Buenos Aires alone, about 240 people checked into hospitals to be treated for burns or open wounds, some resulting from fireworks going off in their hands, local doctors told Telam.

The news agency said a handful of people were hurt by corks shooting from champagne bottles.