A gas leak may have caused the deaths of 21 teenagers who were found dead at the weekend inside a popular nightclub outside the town of East Landon on the east coast of South Africa.
All the victims were teenagers and the youngest was a 13-year-old girl. There are also many survivors, some of whom are being treated while others were unharmed.
The deaths of the youths have spread grief and anger across the country. Relatives of the victims said they had been persistently calling for weeks for the nightclub to be shut down, to no avail.
A spokesman for the coroner's office declined to comment on the investigations until the final conclusion is reached.
Authorities in the Eastern Cape province said in a statement that post-mortem examinations have been carried out on the 21 victims and samples have been taken which will be tested in a laboratory. Police, for their part, said only that the investigation into the cause of the tragedy was continuing.
Authorities have ruled out the possibility that the young people were trampled by the crowds and assume that they were accidentally poisoned by something they ate, drank or smoked. However, a source told Reuters that they were considering the possibility that they were poisoned by a gas on the ground floor of the building, which did not have adequate ventilation. An investigation is under way to determine whether they were poisoned by carbon monoxide, by burning propane inside the club or by some other gas, he added.
The same source said the bodies gave off a strange "chemical smell". Police are examining all devices found at the venue.
[/P][BR][BR]Some of the victims who were taken to hospitals said they felt chest and back pains.
A few residents of the Cinerie Park neighborhood where the tragedy occurred protested today outside the club, whose license was revoked Monday.
Source: Cyprus Times
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