Arema soccer club on Monday apologised to victims of a deadly stadium stampede, with its president Gilang Widya Pramana stating he was ready to take full responsibility for the events.

At least 125 people were killed in the soccer stampede in Malang, East Java at the weekend, officials said, in one of the world's worst stadium disasters.

Meanwhile, Coordinating Political, Security and Legal Affairs Minister Mahfud MD told a news conference that the government will establish an independent fact-finding team to investigate a deadly soccer stampede in a stadium in East Java and help find the perpetrators behind the disaster.

The team will investigate for the next few weeks with the aim of finding who was responsible for the tragedy, he said.

Mahfud said on Sunday the stadium had been filled beyond its capacity. Some 42,000 tickets had been issued for a stadium designed to hold 38,000 people, he said.

The incident was a "dark day for all involved", said FIFA, the governing body for world soccer, which has asked Indonesian football authorities for a report on the incident.

Its safety regulations say firearms or "crowd control gas" should not be used at matches.

A tearful Arema FC president Gilang Widya Pramana apologised on Monday to the victims of the stampede and said he took full responsibility for the disaster.

"Lives are more precious than soccer," he told a news conference.

Source:
courtesy of THE JAKARTA POST

by Reuters

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