8 killed, 26 injured in school stampede in China

[December 08, 2009]  BEIJING (AP) -- Eight youths were killed and 26 injured when students descending a crowded staircase after evening classes at a school in central China lost their footing amid a crush of bodies, state media and the local government reported Tuesday.

Students were rushing out of evening study sessions at 9:10 p.m. on Monday (1310 GMT) at Xiangxiang city's private Yucai Middle School when some fell on top of one another in a stampede down the steps.

More than 400 students had been exiting classrooms on an enclosed stairwell just 4 feet (1.2 meters) wide, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

The dead were listed as seven boys and one girl, aged 11-14, while eight other students were hospitalized with serious injuries, according to a local government notice and the official Xinhua News Agency.

Xinhua quoted an unidentified student as saying the tragedy may have been caused by a pair of boys intentionally blocking students near the bottom of the stairwell.

"Someone shouted at them, and they let us through, but they played the trick again at the staircase leading to the first floor, and someone stumbled," it quoted the student as saying.

A 14-year-old said students were crushed against each other as far up as the third level.

"I had walked down to the third floor when I saw many students huddling together further down the stairs. Then, seven or eight of them stumbled and fell to the bottom of the staircase," said the student, who Xinhua did not further identify but said was among those hospitalized.

The five-story building had four exits, but most students chose to use the one closest to their dormitory because of heavy rain, it said.

CCTV footage shot five hours after the tragedy showed a puddle of blood in a corner of a landing in the darkened, tunnel-like stairwell.

"I just can't describe how I feel," school guidance counselor Chen Xinwei told the station. "You see these students so full of life and then they're just gone in an instant. There's just no way to process it," Chen said.

A notice on the local government Web site posted around noon Tuesday (0400 GMT) said three of the injured had already left hospital and the five others were in stable condition.

Leaders of the city 720 miles (1,160 kilometers) south of Beijing immediately removed the head of the education bureau for bearing "leadership responsibility" for the accident, the government said.

The school's principal and chairman of its board of governors were detained as part of the investigation, said a city official reached by phone. Like many Chinese bureaucrats he refused to give his name.

Reports said some classes were in session on Tuesday, with students and teachers standing for a moment of silence for the dead and injured students. Photographs showed areas of the school roped off with crime scene tape.

Calls to the school's listed office number rang unanswered Tuesday afternoon.

Xinhua said the 12-year-old boarding school has 3,500 students and is known as one of the city's best.

Such schools tend to have large class sizes but few emergency exits or other safety features. In addition to regular daytime classes, most feature evening revision sessions that are a standard requirement for advancement in China's grueling, exam-centered education system.

Despite harsh punishments aimed at forcing improvements, deadly stampedes continue to occur repeatedly in China's schools, usually as students are rushing to exams or charging out of class down tight corridors and narrow stairwells.

Monday's incident was among the deadliest since the crushing deaths of 21 children in a northern China middle school in 2002 after a railing collapsed as hundreds of children were funneling down a pitch-dark staircase after evening review classes.

In that case, the school principal and three other people were arrested and charged with gross negligence and other crimes.

[Associated Press; By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN]

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