BEIJING – A sales promotion set off a stampede in southwest China that left two people dead and 11 injured, a state news agency said.
Details of the Sunday sale in the city of Chongqing were unclear, but Xinhua News Agency said the crowd was scrambling for giveaways during a promotion for a brand of Tibetan medicine.
A 67-year-old woman was among the dead and two people were seriously injured, Xinhua said in a report late Sunday. An investigation was under way.
A spokeswoman for Chongqing's Fuling District government, who refused to give her name as is common among Chinese officials, confirmed Monday that two people died and 11 were hurt. She said the company hosting the sale, Fuling Liaofeng Electronics Co. Ltd., issued an apology.
Fuling Liaofeng Electronics does not have a listed telephone number and could not be reached for comment.
Chongqing was the site of another deadly stampede in 2007. Three people were killed and 31 injured when shoppers surged through the doors of a Carrefour supermarket that was having a sale on cooking oil.
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