By Amelie Baron
PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - At least 16 people were killed and 78 injured early on Tuesday when a CARNIVAL (CCL.NY)float hit a power line in Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince, setting off a stampede by bystanders, officials said.
Amateur video of the incident posted on YouTube showed the electric cable catching a popular singer known as Fantom on the float as it passed near the presidential stand packed with spectators.
Most of the victims were trampled to death in the stampede after the float struck the high-voltage overhead power cable, witnesses said.
Officials earlier reported as many as 18 or 20 dead, but this was lowered by the afternoon to 16.
Seven people on the float were electrocuted, and others died in the ensuing panic. Fantom, part of the hip-hop band Barikad Crew, was among the injured, according to one of his friends.
President Michel Martelly expressed his "sincerest sympathies" to the victims in a Twitter message and his wife visited the hospitals that were treating the injured.
Officials were expected to announce later on Tuesday if the final day of carnival celebrations would be called off out of respect for the victims.
The raucous three-day annual street parade coincides with other Mardi Gras carnivals around the world and attracts large night-time crowds eager to witness competing bands atop highly decorated floats.
At Brazil's Carnival, three men were electrocuted on Tuesday when they pushed a float towards a parade ground and it struck a high-tension power cable in the Nova Iguaçu suburb of Rio de Janeiro, police said.
A sun on the float made of wire touched the power line and sent a fatal electrical charge through the metal frame of the decorated platform, police said. Authorities cancelled carnival festivities in the district after the accident.
(Reporting by Amelie Baron in Haiti and Anthony Boadle in Brazil; Writing by David Adams; Editing by Janet Lawrence, Lisa Von Ahn, Chizu Nomiyama and Jeffrey Benkoe)
