Stampede Kills 26 In Pakistan

(AP)  At least 26 women and children were suffocated or crushed to death Sunday in a stampede at a religious gathering in southern Pakistan, police and doctors said. More than 70 people were injured.

The stampede occurred at an Islamic center of a Sunni Muslim group in downtown Karachi as thousands of women left the gathering for a rally, said Karachi police official Zahid Hussain.

The reasons for the stampede were not immediately known.

Dozens of unconscious women and children were sent to hospitals, Hussain said.

Most deaths were caused by internal injuries and suffocation, said Simi Jamali, a doctor at the state-run Jinnah Post-Graduate Medical Center, which received seven bodies and more than 30 injured people. "Many of the victims are women and children," Jamali said.

The deaths of 19 other people, 15 women and four children, were reported at Liaqat National Hospital, Ali Azmat Abdi, director of the privately run facility said.

More than 40 people injured in the stampede were being treated and "some of them are in very serious condition," he said.

An official at Faizan-e-Medina, the Islamic center where the stampede occurred, said that more than 10,000 women, many accompanied by children, were at the gathering where clerics had delivered sermons about the life of Islam's Prophet Muhammad.

The stampede occurred after the ceremony ended and the women were leaving through a gate, said Hanees Billu, a spokesman for the center, run by Dawat-e-Islami, an Islamic missionary group.

The gathering was held in the run-up to mark the birth and death anniversary of Muhammad on Tuesday.