Study: Gunshots Do Not Have Calming Effect

This is actually no laughing matter as innoent lives were lost in this tragic, bizarre sporting kerfuffle. In a futbol match in Congo, 13 soccer fans, mostly between the ages of 11 to 16 were crushed when paranoia over a soccer player using witchcraft induced utter mayhem. As reactions over the player grew more intesnse, police fired gun shots in the air to calm the crowd. Oddly, that seemed to only fuel the panic, ultimately leading to the suffocation of 13 fans.

While this story is almost to nuts for words, there is a long history of violence here, so presumably things were getting more heated than simply over the witchcraft mumbo jumbo.

[Regional governor] Mpaluku said the government was investigating.

He made no mention of witchcraft, but confirmed that soldiers had fired into the air to calm angry crowds. The shooting prompted panic instead, which became fatal "when the crowds all tried to leave at the same time."

"Most of the dead were children, only two or three were adults," Mpaluku said.

North Kivu has been the epicenter of violence between Congo's army and rebels over the last year which has displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

Stranger than fiction indeed. While we never like to see soccer violence, on a positive note at least this brings a little attention to yet another region of Africa undergoing extreme turmoil that rarely makes the headlines in the U.S.