A total of 45 people died in a stampede during funeral of former President John Magufuli of Tanzania- the country’s Police has confirmed.
“There were a lot of people who wanted to get in the stadium, and some were not patient. They tried to force their way in and that resulted in a stampede. Forty-five died in the accident,” Dar es Salaam regional police commander Lazaro Mambosasa said.
Mambosasa said several dozen were also injured in the crush but most had been released from hospital. Tens of thousands of mourners lined the streets of Dar es Salaam this month to bid farewell to Magufuli, whose sudden death from a short mysterious illness was announced by the government on March 17.
The stampede happened on the second day of tributes at Uhuru Stadium. Magufuli’s body lay in state in the cities of Dar es Salaam, Dodoma, Zanzibar, Mwanza and Geita, before being finally laid to rest in his ancestral village of Chato, in the country’s northwest, on March 26.
Magufuli died aged 61 from what authorities say was a heart condition, after a mysterious absence of almost three weeks, and questions remain over the true cause of his death which the opposition says was from Covid-19.
