'I could have suffocated': Peru's pandemic tensions burst with nightclub tragedy

FILE PHOTO: Police officers stand guard outside a nightclub after it was raided for hosting a party in violation of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) restrictions, in Lima, Peru, August 23, 2020. REUTERS/Sebastian Castaneda

LIMA (Reuters) - Peru, battling one of the world's worst coronavirus outbreaks and a five-month lockdown, was reeling on Monday after the deaths of 13 people, most of them young women, in a stampede at an illegal nightclub triggered by a police raid.

The tragedy at the club, which authorities called "a breeding ground" for COVID-19, has exposed tensions in the Andean nation of 33 million people that has one of the world's worst per capita fatality rates with almost 28,000 deaths.