A stampede at a university in Bolivia on Monday left four students dead and 70 injured when a tear gas grenade was detonated during an assembly, the institution and police said.
Hundreds of students had gathered in an enclosed sports arena of a university in Potosi in Bolivia’s southeast for student council elections, rector Pedro Lopez told reporters.
Police said that as two groups of students argued, someone detonated a tear gas cannister, provoking the stampede.
The institution, Lopez said, was “in mourning.”
The public hospital of the city of some 270,000 inhabitants was overrun with wounded and relatives seeking information on missing students.
Fights between students in Bolivia are not uncommon, and tear gas had been deployed in previous confrontations.
In March last year, 12 students died at a different university when a railing collapsed during another assembly confrontation.
