Riot police were called in to tackle crowd chaos at a World Cup fan zone - just as the tournament kicked off, the Mirror reports. Tens of thousands of fans were said to have been pushed and shoved against police lines to enter a secure area.
It came as fans were queueing before Qatar's 2-0 defeat to Ecuador on Sunday evening, which was shown on giant screens at central Doha's FIFA fan festival. It is reported that helmeted cops armed with batons and shields stood guard at the entrance when pushing and shoving broke out as crushed fans pleaded to enter the zone.
Hatem El-Berarri, an Iraqi who said he was working in the neighbouring city of Dubai in UAE, said panic broke out amid chaotic scenes. He said: "It’s very risky. People could die. Old people, women, they cannot handle crowds like this. Thank God I’m a little bit tall, so I can breathe. But I saw some kids and said ‘get them up. They cannot breathe'. My family is inside. I cannot enter to see them anymore. I don’t know what to do. [The organisation] is not very good." You can get more story updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to our newsletters here.
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Meanwhile, Luis Reyes, a Mexican-American living in Los Angeles, said of the chaos: "You can’t go back and you can’t go forward - I told my son: ’Let’s go outside. It’s too dangerous."
It wasn’t clear if anyone was injured or arrested. Similar problems were reported on Saturday night at a pre-World Cup concert as people tried to push their way inside the same six-mile long zone on Doha's seafront Corniche.
The crush was at the main gate of the FIFA Fan Festival at Doha's Corniche. A spokesman for Qatar's World Cup Supreme Committee said: "The main gate was temporarily closed because it reached capacity quite early on. It has now re-opened. I am not aware of any injuries and it has since re-opened."
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