Witness tells of stadium horror

Football fan Michael Mcmullan was at Johannesburg's Ellis Stadium as the tragedy unfolded. He told CNN what he saw.

The rush basically started about 10 minutes before the game happened.

I got there at seven, the game started at eight. There was a rush until about 7.30. It slowed down and it looked like nothing else was going to happen. Then it came again -- people kept coming down the stairs. It was in the north east corner of the stadium.

People kept rushing and rushing and all of a sudden it got bad. I was about three or four seats from the aisle where people were rushing down the stairs and it just stocked up. People started overflowing into the crowd on either side and it just bottled up -- the crowd just kept coming on.

People were yelling to go back but the crowd just kept coming.

Then they (officials) started bringing paramedics and cops and started hauling bodies out of the aisle.

These guys were yelling up the stairs to go back go back but it just wasn't registering with anybody.

Then they opened the fence at the bottom of the aisle where the field was to relieve some pressure. It helped a little bit.

The crowd just kept coming. It went on for 50 minutes close to an hour. From what I've heard people just rushed the stadium.

You could tell there were too many people and not enough seats - people just kept coming

They were just bringing bodies out onto the field -- they were lifeless. They were lying the bodies - the victims up behind the soccer goalposts and just then all of a sudden they started to bring a lot of people out and just putting them on the field.

Paramedics were rushing to them and security and there were just too many.

They called the game and brought the teams out and no one really knew how many people may have been killed.

They lined the teams round the circle and I think they brought a priest out. They had a moment of silence and that's when they said people have died.

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