Thirty die in Bangladesh stampede at clothes giveaway

GAIBANDHA, Bangladesh -- At least 30 women and children were killed and hundreds injured in a stampede when thousands of poor people scrambled for clothes being handed out as charity in a northern Bangladesh town Sunday, police said.

The stampede happened outside an abandoned jute mill, where the distribution was planned. The crowd surged into the compound as guards opened its gates, causing the stampede.

"We have found the bodies of 26 women and four children. And that's the confirmed death toll right now," said Faridul Islam, a police official at Gaibandha, the town where the stampede occurred.

Two men in charge of distributing the clothes were arrested for possible negligence, Islam said.

Earlier, the unofficial death toll was put at 47.

United News of Bangladesh and ATN Bangla television reported that 33 victims, including five children, died instantly and another 14 people succumbed to injuries on the way to a hospital in Gaibandha.

The reports said at least 200 people were injured, many of them hospitalized.

The stampede occurred after more than 10,000 people, mostly women and children, gathered to get clothes distributed by a local businessman ahead of the Islamic Eid Al-Fitr festival next week.

Most of the charity seekers were women as Sunday was the day set for handing out saris which women in Bangladesh wear. The women were from the poor families of rickshaw-pullers and farm workers. Many of them had brought their children along.

The organizers said they wanted the crowd to stand in a line.

But the women, who had waited for hours, some of them since before dawn, scrambled forward as the organizers began handing out clothes.