{"id":69,"date":"2013-12-30T11:34:33","date_gmt":"2013-12-30T11:34:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/?p=69"},"modified":"2014-01-02T06:46:23","modified_gmt":"2014-01-02T06:46:23","slug":"fan-dies-and-20-injured-in-malawi-football-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/football\/fan-dies-and-20-injured-in-malawi-football-violence\/","title":{"rendered":"Fan dies and 20 injured in Malawi football violence"},"content":{"rendered":"

One fan has been killed and 20 more injured during skirmishes at a Malawi Super League game on Saturday.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Six of those injured are in a seriuous condition after fans from Mighty Wanderers and Silver Strikers clashed at the stadium in Balaka.<\/p>\n

Police in the town, which is about 130 kilometres north of Blantyre, say the violence broke out in the second-half.<\/p>\n

Strikers were leading 1-0 at the time and were on course to claim the point they needed to clinch a third straight title when the match was abandoned.<\/p>\n

The police were forced to intervene and used teargas to try and disperse the fans in the 6,000 seat stadium which lead to a stampede.<\/p>\n

Balaka Police spokesperson Joseph Sauka said scores of people were found down on the ground after the incident.<\/p>\n

“We found one man laying on the ground covered in blood and rushed him to Balaka District Hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival,” Sauka explained.<\/p>\n

“Early indications show he must have been hit with something hard like a stone or bottle in the head.<\/p>\n

“We will be able to make more comments on cause of the death once the hospital has concluded an autopsy.”<\/p>\n

Police say two people were detained after the confrontations and are expected to appear in court on Monday.<\/p>\n

It is not the first time that Wanderers’ supporters have been involved in clashes, earlier this year they were handed a home ground ban for violence.<\/p>\n

However this time it seems that the clashes were instigated by Silver Strikers’s fans.<\/p>\n

Super League of Malawi (Sulom), who organise the league, said the incident was unfortunate and it will conduct a thorough investigation.<\/p>\n

“We do not expect death in the game as beautiful as soccer,” Sulom general secretary Williams Banda said.<\/p>\n

“This is very shocking and we will make sure that all those involved are brought before the court of law.<\/p>\n

“We have information on several more fans that were caught on camera and submitted such to the police.<\/p>\n

“We hope they will do a good job because it is only when perpetrators are punished that we can end violence.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One fan has been killed and 20 more injured during skirmishes at a Malawi Super League game on Saturday. Six of those injured are in a seriuous condition after fans from Mighty Wanderers and Silver Strikers clashed at the stadium in Balaka. Police in the town, which is about 130 kilometres north of Blantyre, say […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":72,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60],"tags":[37,40,41],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions\/71"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}