At least 15 people have been killed and five others wounded in a stampede in Morocco while food aid was distributed.<\/p>\n
The incident occurred in the town of Sidi Boulaalam in Essaouira province. The aid was being handed out by a private local charity.<\/p>\n
Some reports indicate that up to 40 people were injured in the crush. Local media reported that most of the victims were women and elderly people.<\/p>\n
Pictures on social media showed bodies of women laid out on the ground.<\/p>\n
Witnesses told local media that this year’s annual food aid distribution at a local market in Sidi Boulaalam, an impoverished town with just over 8,000 inhabitants, attracted a larger crowd than usual.<\/p>\n
“This year there were lots of people, several hundred people,” a witness who asked to remain anonymous told AFP news agency.<\/p>\n
“People shoved, they broke down the barriers,” he said, adding that the injured had been evacuated to a hospital in Marrakesh.<\/p>\n
Morocco’s interior ministry said that King Muhammed VI had instructed the local authorities to help those affected, adding that he would personally cover all medical and funeral costs.<\/p>\n
An unverified video shot by a bystander before the incident showed a large crowd gathered at the open-air market, waiting for the food distribution.<\/p>\n
It is not clear what triggered the stampede, and an investigation is now under way.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At least 15 people have been killed and five others wounded in a stampede in Morocco while food aid was distributed. The incident occurred in the town of Sidi Boulaalam in Essaouira province. The aid was being handed out by a private local charity. Some reports indicate that up to 40 people were injured in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":375806,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[14761,3,203],"class_list":["post-375729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","tag-food-stampede","tag-ghana-news","tag-morocco"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=375729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/375806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=375729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=375729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=375729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}