AFP, Conakry :Police in Guinea launched an investigation Wednesday into a stampede at a seafront rap concert that left 33 people dead including 11 children in scenes of mass panic.Authorities said the victims had been trampled underfoot on Rogbane beach as thousands surged to the exits after rap group “Instinct Killers” performed to mark the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan on Tuesday.”There was a stampede to get out of the concert, it was after the show that it all happened. The crowd wanted to get out but there was a rope that blocked the way,” a police source told AFP.”People at the back began pushing and people fell, creating a mass panic.”Authorities announced the closure of all beaches in the country in the wake of the disaster.Medical sources told AFP that 33 deaths had been registered at the city’s main emergency unit, with 11 of the victims aged between 10 and 17.A further 58 people received treatment for minor injuries, the hospital said, indicating that several other injured had been treated elsewhere.Another police source told AFP the concert, staged on a beach in a northern suburb of the capital, had been overseen by a small security team of under-trained guards.”The exit was about three metres (wide) and thousands of people and vehicles were trying to get out at the same time,” the source said.Crowds of women gathered to wail in grief in the courtyard of a mosque opposite the city’s Donka hospital, where dead family members lay, as the full extent of the tragedy became clear.
