At Least Nine Women, Three Children Killed In Stampede At Charity Distribution Center In Pakistan

At least nine women and three children were killed and several others injured in a stampede during the distribution of Ramadan charity at a private center in Pakistan’s port city of Karachi, police and rescue officials said.

The stampede occurred late on March 31 when hundreds of women and children panicked and started pushing each other as they were jostling to collect food and money outside of a private company in the industrial area of Karachi, Pakistan's most populous city.

Senior police officer Fida Hussain Janwari told the media that the private company, FK Dyeing, located in an industrial area known as SITE or Sindh Industrial and Trading Estate, had invited the families of its employees to distribute charity on the occasion of Ramadan, Islam's holy month.

Under the Islamic tradition, businesspeople give away food and money, especially to the poor, during Ramadan.

Janwari said that some 400 women had arrived on the premises when the company, fearing a large crowd, closed the gates, causing panic.

He said that inside the premises there were no arrangements in place to form an orderly line and that local police were not informed about the activity.

Hussain said police detained seven people from the company and took them for interrogation.

Pakistan, a South Asian country of some 220 million, has grappled a serious economic crisis over the past several months, facing record high inflation rates and skyrocketing food prices.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has urged the Pakistani government to enact tough tax reforms and increase utility prices in order to qualify for another tranche of a $6.5 billion bailout.

On April 1, Pakistan's statistics bureau announced that consumer price inflation in Pakistan accelerated to a record 35.37 percent in March from a year earlier -- the highest-ever year-on-year increase recorded by the bureau since monthly records began in the 1970s.

Higher prices of food, cooking oil, and electricity contributed to the record growth, the bureau said.