December 2, 2002	Monday	Ramazan 26,1423

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DHAKA, Dec 1: At least 47 people, most of them women and children, were killed and hundreds injured in a stampede when thousands of poor people scrambled for clothes being handed out as charity in a northern Bangladesh town on Sunday, news reports said.

Thirty-three victims, including five children, died instantly in the stampede in Gaibandha town, 192 kilometres north of Dhaka, United News of Bangladesh and ATN Bangla television station reported. Another 14 people died on way to hospital, the reports said.

The reports said at least 200 people were injured, many of them hospitalized.

The stampede occurred after more than 10,000 people, mostly women and children, gathered to get clothes distributed by a local businessman ahead of Eidul Fitr next week.

The incident happened outside an abandoned jute mill, where the distribution was planned. The crowd surged into the compound as guards opened its gates, causing the stampede.

Police said they had detained two people for questioning.

Prime Minister, Khaleda Zia, currently on a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia, ordered a committee to be set up to investigate the incident and conveyed her sympathies to the bereaved families, the official BSS news agency said. It was not the first time stampedes during Ramazan have proved fatal. In 1987, five people died in a similar incident in the southeastern port city of Chittagong, and 11 were killed in 1989.—APP/AFP