LIMA, Peru – Thirteen people died in a stampede at a disco in Peru after a police raid to enforce the country’s unlocking in the coronavirus pandemic, officials said Sunday.
The stampede took place at the Thomas disco in Lima, where about 120 people gathered Saturday night for a party, the Interior Ministry said.
People tried to escape through the only door of the disco on the second floor, trampled each other and trapped in the confined space, according to authorities.
After the stampede, the police had to open the door.
“I feel sorry for the relatives … but also anger and resentment with the business people who organized the event,” Peruvian President Martín Vizcarra said at a public event in the south of the country. He urged judicial authorities to punish those who broke the law.
Some 23 people were arrested, and 15 of them tested positive for the coronavirus and will be in quarantine, Claudio Ramírez, an official of the Ministry of Public Health, told reporters.
The party “was a hotbed of transmitting this disease, there was a viral load because it was a closed environment,” Ramírez said.
Franco Asensios, one of those attending the party, told local radio RPP that the police raid began at 9 a.m. and that authorities told party members to let the women out first.
“People were upset and started going downstairs, and then they said the people at the front were suffocating,” said Asensios, who added that a friend who took him to the party took it over via social media. found her.
Some people at the scene claimed that police fired and fired tear gas during the robbery, but police chief generation Orlando Velasco denied it.
Alejandro Ruiz, a guard on the street where the disco is, told RPP that parties were held there earlier.
“The sound could be heard two blocks away,” Ruiz said. As police cars passed by, people in the disco turned out the lights and lowered the volume of the music, he said.
The building that houses the nightclub is dilapidated on the outside and is located in an industrial area in the Los Olivos district of Lima.
Felipe Castillo, mayor of the district, told local television N that the club was in its jurisdiction, but that oversight and surveillance in the streets is “precarious” because of the effects of the pandemic, which includes a reduction of include the collection of taxes.
Nightclubs have been banned from service since March due to the pandemic. Peru began lifting quarantine restrictions on June 30 in an effort to revive the economy, and the daily reported number of virus infections has doubled to more than 9,000 in recent weeks.
Peru has reported 27,500 deaths due to the new coronavirus.
