The death toll from a stampede at a music festival in the western German city of Duisburg rose to 19 and over 340 people were injured, local police said on Sunday.
Earlier reports said 18 people were killed and over 80 injured.
The panic at the Love Parade started on Saturday near the only entrance to the area of the music festival when crowds of the arriving fans of techno music surged through an already jammed entry tunnel.
The founder of the Love Parade, Matthias Roeingh, known by the name Dr. Motte, has put the blame on the organizers of this year's festival saying they made a number of mistakes that inevitably led to the tragedy.
"How can you expect to let so many people in through a single entrance? It is scandalous and I am very sad [that it happened]," he said.
The organizers of the festival said about 1.4 million people were supposed to attend the event this year.
Love Parade is an annual techno music festival that was originated in 1989, four months after the demolition of the Berlin wall.
Each year it gathers an increasing number of techno music fans. The Love Parade is considered to be one of the loudest festivals due to the special water-cooled sound equipment producing extremely loud sounds.
MOSCOW, July 25 (RIA Novosti)
