At least 22 people killed in stampede during charity handout in Bangladesh

About 1,500 people were anxiously awaiting for doors to open at a plant that announced a free-clothes giveaway.

On Friday, a stampede in central Bangladesh has left at least 23 dead and several injured after hundreds of people rushed at the home of a businessman for a charity handout during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan.

Footage on Bangladeshi TV reportedly showed scenes of devastation outside the factory, with hundreds of pairs of discarded, blood-splattered sandals strewn across the floor by the gates to the compound, as stated by AFP. They had been waiting outside the building since dawn, police officials told the French news agency AFP.

Survivors said about 1,000 people, mostly elderly women, gathered in front of the home of the businessman who distributes clothes every year ahead of Eid festival like many others in largely Muslim Bangladesh. “Most of the dead are poor and emaciated women”, Mymensingh police chief Moinul Haque said.

“We have so far recovered 17 bodies”.

Meanwhile, Kamrul Islam, the senior officer at a police station, said the death toll was likely to rise further as “some people had taken the bodies of their relatives before police arrived at the scene”.

The factory owner, Shamin Talukder, manufactures chewing tobacco, and was known for handing out clothes approaching the end of Ramadan, local police said. In 2002 around 40 people were killed in Tangail, Bangladesh in stampede at a garment factory.