Pakistan: 11 dead, 100 injured in kite flying festival (link to source)

At least 11 people died and more than 100 people were injured at an annual spring festival in eastern Pakistan celebrated with the flying of thousands of colourful kites, officials said today.

The deaths and injuries were caused by stray bullets, sharpened kite-strings, electrocution and people falling off rooftops yesterday at the conclusion of the two-day Basant festival, said Ruqia Bano, spokeswoman for emergency service in the city of Lahore.

The festival is regularly marred by casualties caused by sharp kite strings or celebratory gunshots fired into the air.

Kite flyers often use strings made of wire or coated with ground glass to try to cross and cut a rival’s string or damage the other kite, often after betting on the outcome.

A co-worker pointed me to this article by reading off the first sentence. I’m sitting here thinking “well what the fuck happened? Were there 111 isolated kite-related incidents or did one big kite somehow fall on a crowd?”

The second sentence assured me that good ol’ stray gunfire was responsible for some of the deaths but, still, this story reminds us all that kite-related fatalities are still rampant in the third world.

I can’t help but be reminded of the recent snow angel world record. Roughly 9000 people gathered to make snow angels and not one single drop of blood was shed. I wonder, if the city of Detroit, for example, all decided to spend a day flying kites would it be a bloodbath like the one we just read about in Lahore?

Yeah…it probably would.