More than 70 dead, hundreds wounded in Egypt's worst soccer riots

(Reuters) Seventy-four people were killed and at least 1,000 injured on Wednesday when Egyptian soccer fans staged a pitch invasion in the city of Port Said, the deadliest incident since the ouster of former president Hosni Mubarak from power.

Angry politicians decried a lack of security at the match between Port Said team al-Masry and Cairo's Al Ahli, Egypt's most successful club, and blamed the nation's leaders for allowing - or even causing - the tragedy.

"Down with military rule," thousands of Egyptians chanted at the main train station in Cairo where they awaited the return of fans, quickly turning the biggest disaster in the nation's soccer history into a political demonstration against army rule.

"The people want the execution of the field marshal," they shouted, turning on the ruler of the military council, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, who tried to assuage anger by vowing to find the culprits in a phone call to a TV channel.

The post-match pitch invasion provoked panic among the crowd as rival fans fought, with most of the deaths among people who were trampled in the crush of the panicking crowd or who fell or were thrown from terraces, witnesses and health workers said.

"I saw people holding machetes and knives. Some were hit with these weapons, other victims were flung from their seats, while the invasion happened," Usama El Tafahni, a journalist in Port Said who attended the match, told Reuters. [...]

Many fans died in a subsequent stampede, while some were flung off their seats onto the pitch and were killed by the fall. At the height of the disturbances, rioting fans fired flares straight into the stands.

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