JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Soccer officials Monday unofficially blamed inadequate stadium security for the violence and stampede by thousands of fans that left 42 people dead and more than 50 injured in South Africa's worst sporting disaster.
Two people who were seriously injured died Monday, raising the death toll to 42, the South African Broadcasting Corp. reported.
The sport's umbrella body, the National Soccer League, opened a commission of inquiry into the disaster but refused to speculate officially on what the commission might find.
The public 'can rest assured that the guilty parties will be brought to justice and we will do everything in our power to prevent a future recurrence of this horrific tragedy,' the NSL said, without singling out possible causes.
But individual NSL executives earlier Monday blamed lax security and ground staff for allowing rival fans to mix freely at the Ernest Oppenheimer Stadium, near the western Transvaal province town of Orkney.
'None of the National Soccer League officials were on duty ... there was a lack of other security also,' said one official after the NSL management committee spent the morning picking their way through debris at the stadium and talking to stadium employees.
'There was a shortage of staff ... our people were not there because the game was a so-called pre-season friendly and not NSL-sanctioned,' noted NSL Public Affairs Manager Abdul Bhamjee. 'The fans shouldn't have mixed.'
Opposing fans are kept at opposite sides of the ground at NSL games, but the 20,000 spectators mixed on Sunday and fighting broke out across the stadium when one group disputed a goal.
The NSL delegation was led in its inspection of the ground by NSL Chief Executive Cyril Kobus.
'Before Mr. Kobus got down to business,' one NSL official said, 'he just looked around in silence for a while.'
The fighting between supporters of the two teams, arch-rivals Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates, sent thousands of panicked onlookers streaming for the exits and crushing people in their way.
Witnesses said irate Pirates fans had begun pelting Chiefs supporters with beer cans and other missiles shortly after a Chiefs striker scored a goal, prompting pitched battles among the fans.
'They were throwing cans at each other and some were flashing knives,' a photographer for the Sowetan newspaper said. 'Other fans were trying to run away from the fighting.'
Police could not say how many people died in the fighting, but said most of the casualties were a result of the stampede.
An ambulance official described the scene as 'a bloody mess.'
Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates, both home to many of South Africa's soccer stars, have large followings in black townships around Johannesburg and fans follow the sides to games across the country.
Spectators clash periodically at matches but deaths at games are rare.
