Four dead, 70 hurt in Bolivian university stampede

A tear gas grenade detonated during an assembly at a university in Bolivia on Monday, killing four students and injuring 70 others, according to the institution and police.

According to rector Pedro Lopez, hundreds of students had gathered in an enclosed sports arena of a university in Potosi, Bolivia’s southeast, for student council elections.

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 of last year, 12 students were killed at another university when a railing collapsed during another assembly confrontation