JALALABAD: At least 15 people were killed in stampede among thousands of Afghans gathered near Pakistan’s consulate on Wednesday as jostling broke out between people applying for visas, officials in the eastern city of Jalalabad said.

An estimated 3,000 Afghans had congregated on the open ground, usually used for sports or pubic gatherings, outside the consulate, waiting to collect tokens needed to apply for a visa, two provincial officials said a day after the tragedy.

An Afghan news channel transmitted images of them holding passports aloft to secure a token. Images taken after the stampede showed scores of passports strewn across the ground.

“The visa applicants jostled to secure their token from the consulate officials...the crowd got out of control, leading to a stampede,” said an Afghan official.

A survivor described how tempers frayed and the crowd became unruly in the lead up to the stampede.

“I stood in the queue all night but at some point people got angry and started pushing, many of us fell on the ground,” said Farmanullah, who goes by a single name.

PM Imran Khan saddened by the tragedy

Eleven of the 15 victims were women, and several senior citizens were among more than a dozen injured, Sohrab Qaderi, a provincial council member, said. Tens of thousands of Afghans every year travel to neighbouring Pakistan to secure medical treatment, education and jobs. The two countries share a nearly 2,600-kilometre border.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Imran Khan expressed grief on the Jalalabad incident.

In a tweet posted through his @ImranKhanPTI official handle, the Pakistani leader said: “Deeply saddened by the tragic deaths & casualties in a stampede in Jalalabad of Afghans wanting to get Pakistani visas. My condolences go to the victims families & prayers for early recovery of the injured.”

The Pakistan embassy in Kabul issued a statement expressing “deep grief and sadness”, and officials said Afghan authorities had been responsible for marshalling the crowd on the sports ground.

To avoid overwhelming the visa centre, applicants had been directed to Jalalabad’s nearby football stadium to hand over passports and paperwork, provincial governor’s spokesman Attaullah Khogyani told reporters.

“Unfortunately this morning tens of thousands of people had come to the football stadium which led to the tragic incident,” Khogyani said.

Khogyani and provincial hospital spokesman Zaher Adel put the death toll at 11 women, while Nangarhar provincial council member Naser Kamawal said 15 people had died and 15 more were injured.

Eyewitness Abdul Ahad said women had been given priority to stand at the front of the crowd. In ultra-conservative Afghanistan it is customary for women to queue separately from men.

“When the officials announced that the gates were opening in the morning, everybody rushed to enter the stadium to be the first to deliver their passports,” Ahad said.

“The women, most of them elderly, who were in the front fell and could not get up. It was chaotic.” A woman who survived the stampede recalled hearing screaming and seeing expectant mothers among those who were in the crush.

“Some had miscarriages,” the traumatised woman said, declining to be named.

“One who had been trampled gave birth there. We helped her but her baby was dead. (The mother) was injured, but alive.”Hours after the incident, relatives were seen carrying the dead in coffins from a mortuary in Jalalabad.

Many Afghans travel to neighbouring Pakistan every year, often for medical or educational purposes, while millions have taken refuge there over the past few decades to escape war and poverty in conflict-wracked Afghanistan.

Afghanistan’s health and educational systems have been ravaged by four decades of conflict and violence continues on a daily basis.

Published in Dawn, October 22nd, 2020