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RABAT : A stampede at a world music festival in the Moroccan capital, which featured top names such as Kylie Minogue and Alicia Keyes, left at least 11 people dead, most of them women and children, police said on Sunday.
Some 70,000 spectators were at the Hay Nahda stadium in the southeast of Rabat on Saturday to see home favourite Abdelaziz Stati sing when the accident occurred shortly after midnight on the final night of the Mawazine (Rhythms) festival.
Police said the crowd surging towards one of the exits appeared to have brought down a wire fence, setting off the stampede as the concert ended.
Five women, four men and two children were later found dead, apparently having suffocated in the crush. A source close to the case said all those who died were Moroccan.
The interior ministry has announced an investigation.
Rescuers rushed to the scene to pull out survivors and transport the injured to Rabat's main hospital, Ibn Sina, where a source said all but seven of the injured had left by Sunday morning.
"Most of the injured are young," Abdelatif Benchekroun, the hospital's head emergency care, told AFP.
Doctors had treated about 20 people and another five were still in care on Sunday morning.
The festival organisers could not be immediately reached for comment.
Hassan Amrani, the prefect of the Rabat region, travelled to the hospital to oversee the rescue and treatment operation, the MAP agency reported.
A source close to the city council said the concert venue, originally scheduled to be held in Moulay el Hassan Square in central Rabat, had been switched to accommodate the large number of fans.
The Mawazine festival, created in 2001, is one of the most important cultural gatherings in Morocco, with street shows, an exhibition by Arab artists and children's events in addition to the concerts.
Some 1,700 foreign and local performers had converged on Rabat for the eighth edition of the Mawazine festival, which was opened on May 15 by Australian pop icon Kylie Minogue.
Performers this year included US singing legend Steview Wonder, Algerian singer Khaled, South African singer Johnny Clegg, Brazilian bossa nova artist Sergio Mendes and Italian composer and conductor Ennio Moricone.
The 2008 edition of the festival attracted 1.2 million to nine venues across Rabat.
The festival's president, Mounir El Majidi, said in a message posted on the event's website that said the festival aimed to promote tourism and "support Rabat, as a city open to the world". - AFP/ms
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