German Chancellor Angela Merkel has attended a memorial service for the 21 people killed in a stampede at the Love Parade techno music festival as pressure grew on the local mayor to resign.
'The love parade turned into a dance of death,' Nikolaus Schneider, head of the Protestant church in Germany, told 550 mourners in the Salvator Church at the emotional memorial which was broadcast live on four national television networks.
More than 500 people were also injured in the stampede when panic broke out in a tunnel entrance into the techno festival area at a former freight rail yard in Duisburg.
The Chancellor interrupted her summer holiday to attend the service but criticism of Duisburg mayor Adolf Sauerland over last Saturday's disaster has grown so intense that he opted to stay away.
Mr Sauerland, a leader in Merkel's Christian Democrats, has been assailed for ignoring warnings from city planning agencies, police and fire officials.
They had warned Duisburg was too small to host the event with a crowd of up to a million people.
The mayor said he would not resign and was not to blame.
Flags across Germany were lowered to half-mast on government buildings. At the ceremony rescuers lit candles for the victims.
Police said local officials were to blame for ignoring warnings while organisers blamed police for letting too many people into the railyard.
Hannelore Kraft, state premier of North Rhine-Westphalia and a leader in the Social Democrats, said there were many unresolved issues about what went wrong.
'There are too many questions and not enough answers,' she said, fighting back tears. Her teenage son was at the Love Parade but not hurt.
Demonstration at Duisburg town hall
Angry protesters demanded yesterday that police and local officials be held accountable for the deaths.
About 200 demonstrated outside the town hall in Duisburg.
With banners asking 'Who's going to take the blame?', some accused the mayor and said police ignored cries for help from people being crushed.
Dominic Pavone said that when hundreds of thousands of people panicked as they tried to squeeze through a tunnel and up a ramp to the techno music venue in a disused railway freight yard, he managed to escape by climbing onto a freight container.
'The police filmed people climbing up on the container but they didn't do anything. It was clear that people were dying but they did nothing,' he said.
The crowd chanted for Mayor Adolf Sauerland to resign, saying he and other local officials had ignored prior warnings from police and fire services that the city of 500,000 was too small to host an event that attracted more than a million.
Attention has also focused on the company that has organized the annual Love Parade event since 2006, run by entrepreneur Rainer Schaller who owns the McFit chain of cut-price gyms.
Love Parade was founded in 1989 by a Berlin DJ to promote peace and understanding via techno music and giant floats.
