ABIDJAN, Jan 1: At least 61 people died and dozens more were injured in Abidjan as crowds that had gathered for celebratory New Year’s fireworks stampeded overnight, Ivory Coast rescue workers said on Tuesday.

Witnesses saw many injured children and images broadcast by the television showed bodies stretched on the ground outside the city’s main stadium.

Piles of abandoned shoes and clothing could also be seen at the stadium, where soldiers and police were deployed.

The head of military rescue workers, Lt-Col Issa Sako, told journalists at the scene that 61 people had died. “Forty-nine wounded were evacuated” by rescue workers, he said, adding other injured victims had gone to hospital on their own.

Another rescue official had earlier said that at least 200 people were wounded.

The flow of people at the stadium had caused a “very large crush”, Col Sako said. “In the crush, people were walked over and suffocated by the crowd.” Witnesses said the stampede had broken out after the fireworks ended, though the cause remains unclear. It erupted near the stadium’s main entrance, where security had set up tree trunks as crowd control barriers.

Visibly shaken children were among the roughly 40 wounded taken to a hospital in the wealthy neighbourhood of Cocody, in the north of the economic capital.

A mother named Zeinab who had taken two of her children to the stadium found one of them in the hospital, a small boy who lay on a bed in groggy state.

Ms Zeinab said she “hurt all over”. “I don’t know what happened but I found myself lying on the ground with people stepping on me, pulling my hair or tearing my clothes.”

She said she had been knocked unconscious and been pulled from the crowd by a young man.

The New Year’s fireworks had been touted as a symbol of national renewal under President Alassane Ouattara after the violent post-election crisis that tore the country apart from December 2010 to April 2011, killing some 3,000 people.—AFP