Video: 'Hillsborough Disaster: How it happened in 1989'

(Saturday, April 15, 1989, 3:05 p.m. BST; during the Hillsborough disaster) — 96 people were killed and 766 others were injured today when soccer fans surged forward in severely overcrowded stands at a match in the northern English city of Sheffield.

The victims were crushed and suffocated as hundreds of spectators stumbled down the overcrowded standing area at the Hillsborough Stadium.

The tragedy occurred shortly after the start of a Football Association cup tournament game between the Liverpool and Nottingham Forest teams. The police ordered the soccer match to be stopped after six minutes of play, and the game was abandoned altogether about an hour later.

The tragedy was the worst in the history of British soccer, surpassing the death toll of 66 people in 1971, when crowd barriers collapsed during a match in Glasgow.

The disaster represented another setback for British soccer – a sport whose reputation has been badly tarnished by fan violence and whose teams have been banned from tournaments on the European continent since 1985.