Sixty-one people, mostly elderly women, were trampled to death and many others injured on Saturday morning when a panic stampede broke out at a football stadium in Pasig City, east of Metro Manila, police said.

Police and local government officials gave varying figures on the death toll. Metro Manila police intelligence chief Rojas Jr. said 61 were killed while the local mayor Vicente Eusebio saying 66 including 63 women perished in the incident.

Many of the victims came from the provinces outside Manila, according to Eusebio.

Police said that at least 3,000 spectators, lining up at the stadium's entrance heard an unidentified man shouting "bomb," before they came into chaos. They were waiting to see the anniversary celebration of a local TV's popular game show, which would be held at noon.

The show was canceled due to the incident.

Ambulances and trucks from the military as well as the Philippine Red Cross rushed in and out to transfer the victims to hospitals nearby, as Philippine vice president De Castro appeared at the scene and made cellphone calls to take the command.

The dead bodies of the victims and the injured ones were evacuated from the chaotic scene and police tried hard to maintain order while there were still more than 2,000 people remaining in and around the stadium.

Confined in police's traffic control, the standing crowd could not find way out but kept mostly calm, waiting for authority's order.

Metro Manila police chief Vidal Querrol said he deployed additional policemen to help control situation in the area.

Poor weather hampers rescue efforts

Poor weather has seriously hampered rescue efforts after an Egyptian cruiser carrying some 1, 400 people sank in the Red Sea, a local police official said Friday.

"Rescue efforts are still going on, but they have achieved little progress due to darkness and bad weather," Mohamed Mustafa, head of the police station in Safaga, told Xinhua.

Some of the survivors were still on lifeboats, floating in the sea nearly one day after their ship capsized, as bad weather and low visibility slowed rescue efforts, Mustafa said.

Rescuers also had difficulty in recovering the bodies of the victims after dark descended, he added.

Late Friday night, hundreds of relatives were gathering around the building of Safaga's port authority, waiting nervously for the latest news on the rescue operation, said a Xinhua correspondent at the scene.

Al-Salaam 98 sank overnight Friday en route from the Dubah port in Saudi Arabia to the Egyptian Red Sea port of Safaga after disappearing from radar screen.

Source: Xinhua