PORT SAID, Egypt - Seventy-four people were killed and at least 1,000 injured on Wednesday when Egyptian soccer fans staged a pitch invasion in the city of Port Said, in what a deputy minister called the biggest disaster in the nation's soccer history.
Angry politicians decried a lack of security at the match between Port Said team al-Masry and Cairo's Al Ahli, Egypt's most successful club, and blamed the nation's leaders for allowing - or even causing - the tragedy.
"Down with military rule," thousands of Egyptians chanted at the main train station Cairo where they awaited the return of fans, quickly turning the latest upsurge in violence into a political demonstration against army rule.
"The people want the execution of the field marshal," they shouted, turning on the ruler of the miltiary council, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, who tried to assuage anger by vowing to find the culprits in a phone call to a TV channel.
The pitch invasion provoked panic among the crowd as rival fans fought, with most of the deaths among people who were trampled in the crush of the panicking crowd or who fell or were thrown from terraces, witnesses and health workers said.
More than 70 dead in Egypt's worst soccer disaster
