11 People Killed in Stampede at Moroccan Music Festival featuring Kylie Minogue & Alicia Keys

A stampede at a world music festival featuring Kylie Minogue and Alicia Keys has left at least 11 people dead, most of them women and children, in the Moroccan capital Rabat.

Some 70,000 spectators were at the Hay Nahda stadium in Rabat last night to hear homegrown pop phenomenon Abdelaziz Stati when the accident occurred, shortly after midnight on the final night of the Mawazine (Rhythms) festival.

Police said that a wire fence had apparently collapsed as the crowd surged towards one of the exits as the concert ended, setting off the stampede.

Five women, four men and two children were later found dead, apparently having suffocated in the crush. A source close to the case said that all those who died were Moroccan. The interior ministry has announced an investigation.

Rescuers pulled out survivors and transported about 20 injured to Rabat’s main hospital, Ibn Sina, where a source said that all but seven had left by this morning.

"Most of the injured are young," said Abdelatif Benchekroun, the hospital’s head of emergency care.

The festival organisers could not be reached immediately for comment.

Hassan Amrani, the prefect of the Rabat region, travelled to the hospital to oversee the efforts of the emergency services.

A source close to the city council said that the concert venue, originally scheduled to be Moulay el Hassan Square in central Rabat, had been switched to accommodate the large number of fans.

The Mawazine festival, created in 2001 to boost tourism and promote Rabat as a city open to the world, is one of the most important cultural gatherings in Morocco, with street shows, an exhibition by Arab artists and children’s events in addition to the concerts.

Some 1,700 foreign and local performers had converged on Rabat for the eighth edition of the Mawazine festival, which was opened on May 15 by Kylie Minogue. Performers this year included Stevie Wonder, the Algerian rai singer Khaled, the South African singer Johnny Clegg, the Brazilian bossa nova artist Sergio Mendes and the Italian composer and conductor Ennio Moricone.

Last year's festival attracted 1.2 million people to nine venues across Rabat.

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