43 Die in Stampede at Soccer Match

A stampede of fans inside and outside an overcrowded soccer stadium Wednesday night killed 43 people and injured at least 150 others, South African officials said.

At least 27 bodies lay strewn on the field after the cancellation of the match between the Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates at Ellis Park Stadium. Several others lay outside the stadium.

A stream of ambulances, private cars and a helicopter delivered injured fans to Johannesburg Hospital. Sobbing women were led away from the stadium early today after identifying their relatives’ bodies. Many of the corpses were clothed in the colors of the two teams--the yellow of the Chiefs or black and white of the Pirates.

“We’re stunned, we’re shocked and we’re sending our condolences to those families,” said Ngconde Balfour, minister of sport and recreation.

The stampede killed 43 people, 29 inside the stadium and 14 outside, said Sgt. Amanda Roestoff, a police spokeswoman. Two of the dead were children, she said.

Most of the injured suffered fractured ribs and other broken bones, the South African Press Assn. quoted emergency services spokesman Rodney Eksteen as saying.

A police spokesman said 120,000 spectators had been admitted to the stadium, which has an official capacity of 64,000, before the gates were shut. Witnesses said the crowd erupted into chaos after the Pirates scored a goal.

“That’s when everything happened,” said Louis Shipalana, 42, a security guard at the stadium. “The stadium was full. There was no place to stand. The people were pushing toward the fence [around the field], and the fence collapsed and the people in the back stepped on those in front.”

The stadium was so full that organizers had to shut the gates with thousands of fans still waiting outside, Robin Petersen, a Premier League official, said at the scene. Those fans shoved through the fence, breaking it in four places, he said.

The security at the stadium was not sufficient to handle that number of people, and that set the scene for the deaths, he said.

Emergency officials said people died at the fence separating fans from the field and also at the fence into the stadium.

Security guard Petrus Saayman, 22, said he rushed to help a teenage girl trapped in a fence.

“The girl, she broke her neck or something. When I came there, she was already dead,” he said.

Security guards reportedly had earlier fired tear gas at people stampeding outside the stadium, according to a local radio station.

The match was canceled after about 34 minutes of play with the score tied at 1-1.

The large television screen in the stadium displayed the telephone numbers for the mortuary and the hospital.

President Thabo Mbeki’s office promised an urgent inquiry into the tragedy.

The Chiefs and the Pirates are major rivals, and their matches are wildly popular among South African soccer fans.

The disaster was believed to be the worst in South African soccer history, surpassing the January 1991 stampede in which 42 people died during a match in the small mining town of Orkney.