9 killed during stampede at funeral food ritual in Bangladesh

Bangladeshi woman

Bangladeshi rescuers retrieve garment worker Reshma from the rubble of a collapsed building in Savar on May 10, 2013, seventeen days after the eight-storey building collapsed

Police said nine people died and nearly 50 were injured in a stampede in Bangladesh’s southeastern sea port city Chittagong on Monday.

The city’s police chief Iqbal Bahar told a news conference that the tragedy occurred when thousands of people gathered at a community centre for lunch as part of funeral rituals of a ruling Bangladesh Awami League party leader who died on Dec. 15.

Most of the victims reportedly died from suffocation.

Police said the victims died while scurrying into the community center for the lunch offered as part of the funeral rituals.

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