(Bloomberg) -- Gusts of wind brought down the stage at a campaign event for Mexican presidential candidate Jorge Alvarez Maynez’s Movimiento Ciudadano party, killing nine people.

The accident occurred in San Pedro Garza Garcia in the northeastern state of Nuevo Leon. State Governor Samuel Garcia said that in addition to the deaths, 70 had been taken to the hospital, according to a post on his X account. 

Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told reporters on Thursday that the collapse would be investigated by the authorities and that the political party was not to blame, given that it is standard to hold campaign events ahead of voting day. He added that the focus should be on the victims of the accident.

“To date there are nine dead, and we hope that the injured improve. The majority were women, and there was a kid,” he said. “We also express our solidarity with the political group Movimiento Ciudadano.”

Claudia Sheinbaum, the frontrunner for the June 2 presidential election, and Xochitl Galvez, the runner-up in opinion polls, offered their condolences. 

Alvarez Maynez said in a post on X that he was fine after being taken to hospital, and had returned to the event site. Some members of his campaign staff were injured and were receiving medical attention, he added. He also canceled further campaign events on Thursday.

He ranked third out of three candidates, with 6.7% support in Bloomberg’s most recent Mexican Election Poll Tracker, behind Galvez and the ruling party candidate Sheinbaum, who has maintained a considerable lead over her competitors. 

(Update with comments from Mexico’s president in third and fourth paragraphs and poll tracker in last paragraph.)

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