A control, aimed at enforcing the curfew imposed due to the Covid-19 epidemic, has gone very badly in Peru. A stampede at a nightclub in Lima left at least 13 people dead on Saturday evening trying to flee the police.
A birthday party
"Following a police operation in a nightclub in Los Olivos, 13 people were declared dead," Peruvian police chief General Orlando Velasco confirmed on Sunday. Some 120 people attended the anniversary party relayed on social networks despite the ban on gatherings during the weekend, when the police broke into the Tomas Restobar establishment located in a popular district of the capital.
"Faced with the intervention of the police, who did not use any type of weapon or tear gas canister, the participants in the party tried to escape by the only front door and, in the stampede , found themselves stuck between the door and the stairs, ”said the Interior Ministry. In addition to the 13 dead, three other people were injured as well as three police officers who tried to rescue people trapped in the nightclub.
About twenty people arrested
Among the victims identified so far are twelve women and a man, said Peruvian Minister of Women, Rosario Sasieta, who went there and visited the wounded hospitalized. She demanded "the maximum sanction for the owners of the disco, who are in fact responsible" for this tragedy. About twenty people were arrested.
The police operation was triggered an hour before the start of the night curfew, after neighbors complained about the party. Some witnesses refuted the authorities' version, saying that the police had used tear gas to evacuate the establishment. “It appears that the police entered and threw tear gas canisters. And they locked them up and apparently they were asphyxiated, ”a local resident told RPP radio . The victims were between 20 and 30 years old.
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