At least 11 people were killed in a crowd crush in Pakistan’s southern city of Karachi as a Ramadan alms donation sparked a stampede in the inflation-hit nation, police said.

Afghan Voice Agency(AVA)_Monitoring, Pakistan has been wracked by economic turmoil for months, with the rupee crumbling and staple food prices shooting up nearly 50 percent as the country battles a balance of payments crisis which has forced it into bail-out talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), AFP reported.

Fida Janwari, a senior police officer in western Karachi’s Baldia Town neighborhood, said the stampede happened when needy women with children flocked to a factory distributing alms.

“Panic struck and people started running,” he told AFP. A local administration official said 600 to 700 people were corralled in a small industrial compound.