Up to 20 women and children were killed on Monday in a stampede which broke out as charity workers were handing out free flour to the poor in a crowded neighborhood of Pakistan's financial capital Karachi, officials said.
More than 30 were injured and there were 20 bodies of women and girls, an official in Civil Hospital Karachi, told said.
"They by suffocation in the stampede where a charity was distributing free flour among hundreds of women and children during Ramadan.
Women clad in black burkas sobbed and wailed as ambulances raised through the streets, taking the bodies and injured to hospital.
Injured women and children lay on beds in a crowded hospital, where relatives searched to find their loved ones and dead bodies lay covered in white sheets.
Witness Fatima Hashim, 55, whose daughter was seriously injured said the stampede happened in a small area where huge crowds converged for handouts.
"The place where wheat flour was being distributed was very narrow, which suffocated hundreds of women and children," she said.
"I went along with two of my daughters to get two bags of flour but now my younger daughter is struggling for life in the hospital," she added.
They were in a long line waiting for their number to be called to get a 22-pound bag of flour from the charity when people started running."
Heavy traffic delayed rescue workers in reaching what is one of the most congested areas of Karachi, a teeming city home to an estimated 14 million.
In April 2006, the country's worst stampede in recent history killed 29 women and children at a religious gathering to mark the anniversary of the Prophet Mohammed's birth in Karachi.
