Organizers of the Beijing Olympics have announced that all of the tickets for events in the Chinese capital are sold out.
The announcement came Monday in a brief notice on the Beijing Games' Web site and makes the August 8-24 event the first Olympics ever to sell out.
Tens of thousands of enthusiastic Chinese fans waited in line for as long as two days to buy the last group of tickets on Friday. The scene was chaotic at ticketing centers in Beijing as fans battled police, reporters and each other to make their purchases.
Approximately 250,000 of the tickets available were for events in Beijing, while even more were for early round football matches in several other cities.
A final batch of 14,000 tickets for equestrian events were to go on sale in co-host city Hong Kong on Tuesday.
Meantime, two dead birds found last week at the Olympic equestrian venue were removed and were being tested for the dangerous (H5N1) bird flu virus. Bird flu does not pose a threat to horses, but it can sicken humans.
Three years ago, the Olympic equestrian events were moved to Hong Kong because of a rash of equine diseases and substandard quarantine procedures on the mainland.
Some information for this report was provided by AP and Reuters.
