Cash for stampede victims
10/04/2006 13:32  - (SA)  

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Stampede in Karachi kills 26 19 dead in mosque stampede Factory stampede injures 40 TV stampede toll hits 88 79 die in TV stadium stampede At least 345 dead in haj stampede

Karachi - Provincial authorities offered compensation on Monday to the families of 29 women and children killed in a stampede at a religious gathering a day earlier in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi.

Administrators at the Sunni Muslim Faizan-e-Medina centre in Karachi also pledged to build more gates at the centre to prevent stampedes in the future, said Hanees Billu, a spokesperson for the centre.

Thousands of women were leaving the centre through its only exit after hearing clerics deliver sermons marking the birth of Islam's Prophet Muhammad, when a woman bent down to pick up her daughter who had fallen.

This caused other people behind her to trip, triggering the stampede, centre officials and witnesses said.

Hospital officials reported 29 deaths and more than 70 injured.

The families of the dead will receive 100 000 rupees ($1 667) while the injured will each be given 30 000 rupees ($500), said Sindh provincial government spokesperson Saladin Haider.

Billu, of the Dawat-e-Islami missionary group that runs the centre, said more than 10 000 women, many accompanied by children, were at the gathering.

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