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Al-Ahram Weekly 21 - 28 January 1999 Issue No. 413 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 21 - 28 January 1999 Issue No. 413
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Focus Economy Opinion Culture Features Living Travel Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Hell's gate
By Eman Abdel-MoetiA preliminary investigation into the death of eight people and the injury of 16 others at a football match in Alexandria last week shows that spectators were caught in a stampede as thousands of fans surged into the third-class stands through a single gate, while the stadium was in darkness.
Mohamed El-Medani, general prosecutor of the Bab Sharq district in Alexandria, indicated that the deaths and injuries occurred when some of the fans fell off the stairs and hit their heads, while others were trampled underfoot.
The match between Ittihad Sakandari and Koroum on 12 Monday night was scheduled for an 8.00pm kick-off, but the tens of thousands of fans who arrived at the Alexandria Stadium after Iftar, found the gates closed and the stadium in darkness. Eye-witnesses said that at 7.00pm a single gate for third-class fans, who numbered 15,000, was opened. Fans said the police were unable to control the thousands of people who shoved their way through the one gate. The deaths and injuries were not discovered until after the game started.
According to the regulations of the International Football Federation and the Egyptian Football Federation, gates should open four hours before the match starts.
As investigations move into their second week, officials from the two clubs, Ittihad Sakandari and Koroum, and those from the stadium are continuing to deny responsibility for the tragedy: Kamal Shalabi, head of Ittihad, said his club did not organise the match; Mahfouz Abdel-Salam, head of Karoum, who organised the match, said his club's responsibility was confined to selling tickets and the manager of the stadium, Abdel-Alim El-Gammal, said the stadium is under the control of the Alexandria governorate and not the Supreme Council for Youth and Sports. He said it often lacks adequate supervision.
Meanwhile, Alexandrines are shocked by the tragedy. Many football fans are adamant they will not risk their lives by attending matches at the stadium.
Prime Minister Kamal El-Ganzouri has ordered compensation of LE3,000 to be paid to each family of the fans who died and LE1,000 to each of the injured. Furthermore, the LE45,000 profit from the sale of tickets for the match, as well as thousands of pounds donated by businessmen involved with both clubs, have been distributed among the victims' families.
Mohamed Abdel-Moneim, who has been organising matches at the Ahli club for many years, said he encountered many problems while organising matches between Ahli and Ittihad at the Alexandria stadium: "The stadium's main gates are on a main street, while the back gates are close to the railway line, which makes it difficult to set up a cordon around the stadium to prevent huge crowds from building up," he said.
Abdel-Moneim said that when Ahli was scheduled to play in Alexandria, it would ask permission from the governorate to close the main road outside stadium at least two hours before the match started. "It is really the only way to ensure the safety of fans," he said.
Officials of the Egyptian Football Federation are now discussing the possibility of putting electronic gates in all of the stadiums around country, and selling numbered tickets.
Tickets for the Under-17 World Football Cup, which Egypt hosted last year, were numbered, including those at the Alexandria Stadium. As a result, the large number of fans that attended the games entered the stadiums with very few problems.
Although officials are now calling for a new stadium to be built in Alexandria, with electronic gates and larger capacity, others are saying the solution is simpler: gates should be opened four hours before the match, as specified by regulations, not one hour before.
