(17 Oct 1996) Spanish/Nat
Up to 100 fans died in a crowd crush in a soccer stadium in Guatemala City, as they surged through a tunnel to watch a World Cup qualifying match against Costa Rica Wednesday night.
Guatemala's top prosecutor said at least 83 people were trampled or suffocated to death, and hospitals said hundreds were injured.
The match was suspended and Guatemalan President, Alvaro Arzu, declared three days of national mourning.
Shocked fans filed out of Guatemala's Mateo Flores National Stadium as ambulances tried to get to the site of the tragedy.
The disaster occurred about an hour before a World Cup qualifying match between the Guatemalan and Costa Rican national teams.
Some 45-thousand people, including the presidents of the two countries, packed the stands of the stadium in Guatemala City.
Too many tickets were apparently sold for the match.
Fans crammed into every corner of the stadium, sitting on the highest walls, next to field lights and on top of the roof of the press boxes as well as in the stairway accesses.
All gates were practically blocked.
Fans who were not allowed in tried to pass through a concrete causeway about 15 yards long and three yards wide into the stadium.
Security forces could not stop them and the crowd surged through the gate, trampling and suffocating people inside.
Bodies of men, women and children were laid out next to the pitch at Mateo Flores National Stadium after the match was suspended.
At least 83 people were trampled or suffocated to death.
Firefighters and police lowered the victims from the grandstands.
SOUNDBITE: (Spanish)
Too many people started coming in, that was the real fact. They let in many more people than there was room for in this area and that caused people to agglomerate and started to step over the people already sitting there. That's why people were trampled to death.
SUPER CAPTION: Edgar Valle, reporter from ECO Television
Hospitals said hundreds were treated for fractures, suffocation or shock.
Guatemalan President, Alvaro Arzu, said the accident had been one of the worst-ever tragedies in the country.
He declared three days of national mourning.
The world's worst previous soccer crowd disaster came at Sheffield, England, in 1989 when 95 died crushed against a crowd barrier.
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