Stampede for Olympics tickets

BBC News, Beijing

Thousands of people have descended on ticket booths across the Chinese capital, Beijing, to get their hands on the last batch of Olympic tickets.

Police had to call in reinforcements at one sales centre near the main Olympic venues to hold back surging crowds. Tickets for high-profile events were snapped up in a matter of hours.

A total of 820,000 tickets went on sale from 0900 local time, but some people had been queuing for days. Buyers have been restricted to two tickets each. The biggest scrum appeared to take place at the booth near the main Olympic venues, where crowds had to be held back by police. Many waiting were drenched in sweat by the time they finally made it to the front of the queue. One man said he had managed to jump the queue at a particularly chaotic moment.

This sales centre was selling tickets for a number of high-profile events, including the much-sought-after 110m hurdles final. Chinese athlete Liu Xiang is the reigning Olympic champion in this event and tickets sold out in just half an hour. Tickets for diving events, another sport in which China excels, were gone in just a few hours. There were more orderly line-ups at other Olympic venues.

At the Workers' Stadium, where tickets for Olympic football matches were on sale, people had been queuing since Thursday. Many had brought stools to sit on, and something to eat and drink, as they waited in a queue that was several hundred metres long. Others shared cigarettes or stood in line fanning themselves as the morning temperature began to rise.

"We've been here all night. It wasn't too bad," said Song Lihua, as she stood holding an umbrella to shade herself from a sun that was struggling to break through the morning smog. Ms Song was near the front of the queue, but still expected she would have to wait another four or five hours. "They are too slow," she shouted, a call repeated by others. "There are only three tickets windows open." Others who had just arrived were amazed - and slightly depressed - to find so many people already waiting.

"The queue's too scary," said student Xie Gu, who had come up to Beijing from southern Zhejiang Province to get an Olympic ticket. The 20-year-old said he was going to walk to the end of the queue to see how long it was before deciding whether or not to stay.