Pandemonium at Ikea London store opening

LONDON, Feb. 10 (UPI) -- The midnight opening of a north London Ikea store Thursday resulted in near-riots and sent five people to hospitals within 30 minutes, the BBC reported.

Advertising announcing sales over 24 hours attracted between 4,000 and 6,000 people to the store, the London Ambulance Service said.

People began lining up six hours before the opening, with some even abandoning their cars on a nearby highway. At midnight, people barged through the doors. Witnesses said security guards stood back for fear of being trampled.

The company blamed the chaos on "an unforeseen volume of customers" and said the store would not reopen until safety issues had been re-evaluated and damaged doors were repaired.

Meanwhile, the member of Parliament for the area, David Lammy criticized the Swedish chain of stores.

"Ikea must have known that opening the store next to the second most deprived constituency in London that people would flock to their store in large numbers," Lammy said. "They did not put in place the right infrastructure to deal with that."