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CHAPECO, Brazil (AP) — Twenty-thousand people have filled a tiny stadium in Brazil to say goodbye to members of a soccer club who died in a plane crash.
Tens of thousands more crowded outside Chapeco's stadium, despite a steady rain, and lined the roads as the caskets were driving in a procession from the airport to the stadium memorial.
Monday's crash in the Colombian Andes claimed most of the team's players and staff as they headed to the finals of one of Latin America's most important club tournaments. Seventy-one of the 77 people on board died, including 19 players.
Soldiers carried the coffins into the stadium on their shoulders, sloshing through water and mud on a field filled with funeral wreaths, club and national flags, and other tributes. A tent, with the coffins placed underneath, stretched across the width of the soccer field.
The rain let up at the end of the two-hour memorial, lifting some of the gloom.
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