April 12 (UPI) — A stampede at a historic fortress in northern Haiti that is a popular place for tourists to visit was the site of stampede that killed at least 30 people and injured dozens of others.
The stamped occurred at the Citadelle Laferriere, a 19th-century fortress seen as a symbol of resistance against French colonialism, that some have linked to the appearance of a popular social media influencer called Dopefresh, The New York Times and The BBC reported.
Dopefresh was among a large crowd that visited the Unesco World Heritage-denoted site for an event celebrating the founding of the fortress.
“In the face of this painful situation, the national authorities express their strong emotion and immense sadness,” Haitian Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aime said in a statement posted to Facebook.
The Citadelle Laferriere was commissioned by Haiti’s first king, Henri Christophe, after the nation gained its independence from France to help defend it in the event of an invasion and took more than a decade to build.
The site is especially popular around Easter, and on Saturday when it started raining heavily, a logjam of visitors at the site’s entrance turned chaotic, according to Haiti’s minister of culture and communication, Emmanuel Menard.
“While some people wanted to leave, others were trying to enter,” Menard said after the melee. “People began pushing. Some fell, and others trampled over them.”
“Consequently, some people died from suffocation,” he said.
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