KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 2 (KUNA) -- At least 129 people were killed and about 180 injured in a soccer match at Kanjuruhan Stadium in the Indonesian city of Malang, after a stampede of fans during a riot, the Indonesian police said Sunday.
After the match that was held in the East Java province between Arema Football Club and Persebaya Surabaya on Saturday evening, that ended with the latter's victory, fans of the losing team stormed the stadium and the police fired tear gas, which led to stampede and suffocation cases, East Java Police Chief Nico Afinta said in a press conference.
"It had gotten anarchic. They started attacking officers, they damaged cars," he said, adding that two police officers were among the dead with 34 people killed at the scene and many others in hospital.
The stadium was overfilled, Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs of Indonesia Mahfud Mohammad said, explaining that 42,000 tickets had been issued for a stadium that had the capacity to hold 38,000 people, calling for an urgent investigation into the case.
He underlined that the ministry will re-evaluate safety in football matches, while the Football Association of Indonesia suspended football matches of Indonesia's top league for a week to complete investigations.
Additionally, the Indonesian Human Rights Commission noted that it intends to investigate the security situation, including the use of tear gas, as the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) specifies in its safety regulations that no firearms or gas should be carried or used to control fans.
Kanjuruhan Stadium disaster is considered one of the worst stadium disasters in the world, after exceeding the death toll in the Hillsborough Stadium disaster at England's city of Sheffield in 1989, which killed 96 Liverpool fans due to the stampede in a closed and crowded stadium in numbers exceeding its capacity. (end) aab.lr