Fatal stampede: Anger at mayor

2010-07-26 11:12

Duisburg - The mayor of the German city of Duisburg was under intense pressure to quit on Monday two days after a panicked stampede at the Love Parade left 19 people dead.

Authorities had reportedly been warned the western city was too small to hold one of Europe's biggest techno music festivals, while security arrangements have been slammed as being woefully inadequate.

"Even if prosecutors are still conducting their investigation, it is clear the Duisburg city officials failed completely," the local Neue Rhein Zeitung (NRZ) said in an editorial.

"Even on the evening of the accident, while seriously injured people were dying in hospital, officials were cowardly trying to talk their way (out) of it and even defending their security plan."

‘Mockery of the dead’

Mayor Adolf Sauerland, who staunchly defended what he said was a "solid security plan" at a news conference on Sunday, has come under fierce attack.

"The cynical reaction of the mayor, who said the victims' behaviour was partly to blame, was unacceptable," wrote the NRZ paper.

"His scandalous position was nothing less than a mockery of the dead - of young people who came from afar to party and who died because of your overburdened organisation."

Police said that the 11 women and eight men died as they scrambled to escape from a crush in a narrow, 100-metre tunnel that served as the only entrance to the festival grounds.

The dead were aged between 20 and 40 and included seven foreigners, from Australia, Italy, the Netherlands, China, Bosnia and Spain. More than 340 people were injured.

Television pictures showed lifeless bodies being passed over the heads of those frantically trying to escape while oblivious revellers danced.

"I saw dead people in the tunnel, others alive but unconscious on the ground," said Anneke Kuypers, an 18-year-old from New Zealand. "Others were crying."

German-born Pope Benedict XVI and Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed their horror, with the German leader calling it a "very, very dreadful and sad day" and demanding a "very intensive investigation".

Angry messages

Flags were at half-mast in the small, western German city on Monday after Saturday's tragedy, and in the surrounding region.

At the entrance to the tunnel, where dozens of candles and an impromptu remembrance board with hundreds of signatures marked the dead, there were furious messages for the organisers.

"This event should never have taken place here," read one. "You should be ashamed of yourselves," said another.

Monday's edition of the daily Stadt-Anzeiger in nearby Cologne said the mayor had been warned in writing in October 2009 that the grounds were too narrow for the expected crowds but that the concerns went unheeded.

Spiegel magazine said on its website that the festival only had authorisation for 250 000 revellers instead of for 1.4 million people who organisers said had attended.

Prosecutors have begun an investigation.
 

- SAPA