2010-07-27 04:45

DUISBURG, Germany - The death toll at Saturday's mass panic during the Love Parade, an electric music festival held in Germany's western city Duisburg has risen to 20 on late Monday, local police said.

A young man places candles near a cross and a gravestone made of ice at the entrance to a tunnel in Duisburg July 26, 2010, where several people lost their lives in a stampede at the "Love Parade 2010".??[Photo/Agencies]

A police spokesman said a 21-year-old German woman died of serious injuries on Monday in a hospital.

The 20 killed, 12 women and eight men, were aged between 18 and 38. Twelve of them are Germans, and two were Spanish, others from the Netherlands, Australia, Bosnia, Italy and China.

Police said 43 people were still in hospital, and the latest figure of injured people has climbed to 511 from Sunday's 342, of whom 283 were hospitalized.

However, the number contained those injured in the stampede and those having treatment in hospital for alcohol or drug abuse during the parade.

The exact reason of the tragedy is still unclear, as an investigation is underway. The Interior Ministry in North Rhine- Westphalia state, where Duisburg is located, decided Monday that the investigation would be taken over by police in Cologne to ensure the impartiality.

The panic broke out shortly after 5 p.m. local time on Saturday. Witnesses said some music fans were climbing up fences and walls to leave an overcrowded tunnel, which was under a motorway and led to the main stage of the parade and open-door party.

They said some people fell from the fences and then were scrambled over, causing more people on the ground to be crushed, as thousands of them were piling up in a narrow ramp and pushing each other.

Sharp criticisms, intense anger and doubts are mounting as people blamed that the city officials, police and organizers were not well prepared for such a large-scale festival, which has attracted tens of thousands of people over Europe.

The Love Parade is one of Europe's largest electric music festival, which was first hosted in Berlin in 1989, and then left the capital in 2007 and was held in several other German cities.

Rainer Schaller, the founder of the Love Parade, said Sunday that the Love Parade will never be held again, as it was overcrowded by the astonishing tragedy.