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Germany

No more Love Parades, says organiser

There will be no more Love Parades, organiser Rainer Scheller announced on Sunday, as it was revealed that four foreigners were among the 19 who died at the music festival in the German city of Duisburg.

Reuters
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The dead, all of whom were in their 20s and 30s, included an Australian woman, an Italian woman, a Dutch man and a Chinese man, local police chief Detlef von Schmeling told a news conference where he sat alongside Scheller.

Only 16 of the 19 people crushed to death at the annual festival have been identified. Sixteen died at the entrance to a tunnel leading to the festival field but nobody died in the tunnel itself, officials say.

They claim that the field was not full, although several eyewitness accounts contradict this version.

But the organisers admit that the venue could only fit 300,000 people, while about 1.4 million people turned up for the event.

At least one firefighter has launched a criminal complaint saying he had warned organisers of exactly what happened, according to the Neuen Ruhr/Neuen Rhein Zeitung newspaper.

The police trade union also says its members had huge misgivings about the organisation of the event.

Pope Benedict XVI expressed "deep sorrow” over the deaths on Sunday.

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