Two die in Zimbabwe sugar stampede

HARARE, Aug 16 (Reuters) A 15-year-old boy and a security guard died in a stampede by shoppers desperate to buy sugar in Zimbabwe's second largest city Bulawayo, a police spokesman said today.

The security guard was manning the entrance to a shopping complex when a pillar collapsed under pressure from the shoppers and fell on him.

Both the boy's legs and one arm were fractured, and he died in hospital, police spokesman David Nyathi said.

Sugar and other basic goods such as bread, meat, and milk have been in short supply since President Robert Mugabe ordered shops to halve prices in June following rampant inflation.

The price move, accompanied by a police crackdown on businesses which failed to cut prices, triggered frenzied buying and long queues for goods when they become available.

A state-owned newspaper reported that several people were injured in Bulawayo before police were called to allow the orderly sale of the sugar.

Zimbabwe, once a regional breadbasket, is in the grips of an economic crisis. Its official inflation rate of 4,500 per cent in May is the highest in the world.

Critics blame the economic crisis on Mugabe's controversial policies, such as his drive to forcibly take land from white commercial farmers to give to landless blacks in a bid to redress colonial land imbalances.

Mugabe, 83 years old and Zimbabwe's only ruler since independence from Britain in 1980, denies mismanaging the economy and blames Western sanctions for the meltdown.

Reuters SBC RN2324