At least 13 people died of suffocation in a nightclub in Lima on Saturday night in a police operation prior to the start of the Sunday curfew in Peru due to the coronavirus pandemic, police reported.
“After a police operation in a discotheque in Los Olivos, 13 people are reported dead”, Police Chief General Orlando Velasco told RPP radio.
The events occurred when the Police raided a nightclub where 120 people participated in a party called through social networks, violating the rule that prohibits group meetings in Peru due to the state of health emergency due to COVID-19.
“Faced with the police intervention, which did not use any type of weapon or tear gas, those attending the party tried to escape through the only entrance door, running over and being trapped between the door and a local staircase,” said the ministry of the Interior in a statement.
Some participants of the party and neighbors refuted the police version of having dispensed with tear gas to vacate the premises.
“It seems that the police have entered and thrown tear gas canisters at them and they have locked them up and it seems that these people have died of suffocation,” said a neighbor in the area on RPP radio.
Among the thirteen deceased people there are eleven men and two women. Three other civilians were injured, as well as three policemen who tried to free and help the trapped people.
“He died in my arms”
The ages of the victims range between 20 and 30 years, according to press reports.
“If I’m still alive, God knows why, my partner who was with me, died in my arms,” a devastated young woman who attended the disco where a birthday was celebrated told reporters.
When “the police intervened, they said let the women come down (…) I carried my girlfriend, but she died on the way to the hospital,” Franco Carrasco told RPP radio.
Some 23 people were detained at the Los Olivos Criminal Investigation Directorate, a populous district north of Lima.
The Minister for Women, Rosario Sasieta, who went to the disco, was outraged by what happened in the middle of a state of health emergency.
“It should never have happened, we are in a pandemic, in a health emergency. I ask the maximum sanction for the owners of the disco, they are practically responsible,” the minister told RPP radio.
The night curfew applies throughout Peru from 10:00 p.m. on Saturday (03:00 GMT) to 04:00 a.m. (09:00 GMT) on Monday, including the entire Sunday day.
The government banned social gatherings to curb the spread of the new coronavirus, which has left 27,453 dead and more than 585,000 confirmed cases since the first contagion in March.
With 33 million inhabitants, Peru is the third in Latin America in deaths from the pandemic after Brazil and Mexico, and second in infections behind the South American giant.
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