Herbert Mensah

ACCRA, Ghana – Up to 125 people have been killed and hundreds injured in a stampede at a football stadium in Ghana. Ghana Television journalist Francisca Ashietey-Odunton told CNN that the tragedy happened at the end of a match in Accra between premier league rivals.

She said there were reports that all the gates were locked.

Many people were injured in the crush as some 70,000 spectators tried to get out of the stadium when police fired tear gas on people who were tearing up seats, she said.

Accra Hearts of Oak were leading 2-1 against Assante Kotoko with five minutes left in the game when some supporters began throwing bottles and chairs onto the field, witnesses said.

Police then fired tear gas, creating panic in the stands as spectators rushed to escape the gas, witnesses said.

“Some died of suffocation but the majority seem to have been killed by being crushed,” Brigadier Daniel Twum, of the military hospital where most of the dead and injured were taken after the stampede, told the Reuters news agency.

President John Kufuor, clearly very shaken by the tragedy during a visit to the injured, told Reuters simply “this is really sad.”

One of his officials said Kufuor screamed when he first heard the news.

An emergency cabinet meeting has been scheduled for later on Thursday and presidential aides said that a period of national mourning would be declared.

Minister of Presidential Affairs Jake Obetsebi-Amptey urged relatives to return home, telling the Associated Press news agency that they were crowding the hospital and creating problems.

“What is important now is to remain calm. It is a night for us to mourn and not a night to worsen an already bad situation with anger and impatience.”

It was the fourth soccer disaster in Africa during the past month.

Forty-three people were killed on April 11 at a stadium in Johannesburg, South Africa. Another stampede on April 29 killed eight people in Lubumbashi, Congo.

On May 6, fighting broke out among fans at a soccer match in Ivory Coast, killing one person and injuring 39.

CNN