Life is Cheap, Part XLVII

Why would women leaving a religious event stampede and crush a bunch of other women and children? Were they so covered up that they could not see properly? Were they made to hurry for some reason so that they couldn't stop? How the hell could something like this happen? Maybe I just don't understand crowd dynamics, but there has got to be some serious negligence going on here.

Bad enough when human beings shoot and blow each other up. But when they kill themselves through mindless herd behavior I really wonder if the human race isn't just too stupid to live.

Update: Qatar's The Peninsula newspaper says that the crush was set off when someone yelling for help with a fallen child set off a panic in the crowd. Of course, having more than one exit for 50,000 people might also have helped:

...Dawat-e-Islami party spokesman Nadeem Qadri blamed the authorities for closing off some exit points to the mosque because of earlier construction work.

“These congregations are nothing new in the city. For the last 15 years we held it every week. The incident took place because the government had closed three entry and exit points because of a newly constructed park,” he said.

So it's not mindless herd behavior but mindless official incompetence....the world makes sense again.

State authorities have ordered an inquiry into the incident.