The effect of an unexploded bomb
Children crushed at Dagestani market
Four people were killed and 17 were injured in a stampede that occurred at the Sport wholesale clothing market in Khasavyurt. The panic was caused by a message about an alleged bomb.

On Saturday, when the tragedy occurred, there were about 5 thousand people at the market. Suddenly there was a cry from the crowd: “Bomb! Bomb!” As eyewitnesses later said, the pickpocket who was caught red-handed by the police was shouting. After this, hundreds of people rushed to the exits in horror. But they turned out to be closed, and, according to many people who were there, they were closed by the police, trying to detain the accomplices of the caught thief.
“What happened is simply impossible to describe,” says one eyewitness. “The crowd literally went crazy. People swept away everything in their path, overturned counters and crushed each other. There was no one to help them.”
In the terrible crush that occurred at the gate, 67-year-old Aishat Abasova, 63-year-old Aishat Gadzhimuradova, 8-year-old Sapiyat Magomedova and 6-year-old Khadizhat Gazimagomedova died. They came to the market to buy school supplies for the new school year. When panic set in, the crowd knocked them down. Two elderly women and two girls were simply crushed by dozens of bodies that fell on them. Another 17 people, including 7 children, were taken to a local hospital with various injuries.
“I fell on people already lying down. Someone also fell on top of me. I lost consciousness from the stuffiness and pain. I woke up when they began to lift me. Only then did I see that the gate was opening, and an ambulance behind them,” said one of the victims, whose collarbone was broken in the stampede.
The Khasavyurt prosecutor's office opened a criminal case under the article "organizing mass riots resulting in human casualties." And the Minister of Internal Affairs of Dagestan, Lieutenant General Adilgerey Magomedtagirov, ordered his subordinates to check compliance with security measures at all republican markets.
“I do not rule out that the tragedy may repeat itself,” Magomed Rasulov, head of the pediatric surgery department of the Khasavyurt district hospital, told Kommersant, who witnessed the incident and himself delivered the victims to the hospital. “When people heard the word ‘bomb’, they went mad with fear. They can be understood - Chechnya is nearby, and moreover, a terrorist attack was committed in the city quite recently (August 6 - Kommersant). Then, during a car explosion near a residential building, two girls were killed, three men were injured. After this incident, the city literally lived on a powder keg.”

YURIY-SAFRONOV, Makhachkala

Newspaper "Kommersant" No. 159 dated 08.29.2000, p. 9