Nearly 200 people were killed and hundreds more wounded in carnival festivals in Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia and Panama, according to reports reaching Washington DC on Wednesday.

The heaviest death toll occurred in Ecuador where 104 people died, 262 were wounded, and five committed suicide, police spokesman Juan Zapata told the press in the capital of Quito.

Thanks to new Carnival security measures, this year's death toll is still lower than that of last year, when the festival claimed 120 lives and 1,510 people were arrested, Zapata said.

In Bolivia, 57 people died and 208 were injured, tripling the number registered a year earlier. Drunk driving was the main cause of the casualties, police said.

In Colombia's Barranquilla festival, 17 people were killed, nearly doubling last year's figure of nine deaths, medical workers said.

Of those dead, seven died in car accidents and six in shootings, one was beaten to death at a club, one was strangled, a minor was drowned and another person, who was drunk, fell from a bridge.

In Panama, two people died in carnival accidents, a much lower figure than a year earlier when 18 people were killed.

(Xinhua News Agency March 2, 2006)