36 die in Bangladesh stampede

At least 36 people, most of them women and children, died in a stampede while scrambling to collect clothes being distributed as "zakat" by a mill owner in northern Bangladesh yesterday. A number of others remained in hospital in critical condition after the incident.

Police quoting witnesses said about 10,000 people thronged the Paschimpara residence of M.A. Wahid, the owner of Nahid Cotton Mill in Tangail, at 7am to avail themselves of charity ahead of Eid Al Fitr, responding to an earlier announcement.

When the gate was opened they were asked to go to the adjacent Adamjee warehouse to collect the clothes that were being given away.

Among the dead were 27 women and four children.

"Police and relatives of the victims recovered 36 bodies and took 15 others to hospital after the incident," police Sub-Inspector Golam Minhaz said over telephone from Gaibandha, the scene of the disaster. Gaibandha is a town 335km north of the capital, Dhaka.

Some in the crowd had been waiting all night, and when the gates were opened, the surge of people was so great that one of the walls of the compound was said to have collapsed.