<P> Emergency clinics were swamped with injured and bloody children . The police requested that the hospital provide a list of all victims with bullet wounds to prosecute them for rioting . The hospital administrator passed this request to the doctors, but the doctors refused to create the list . Doctors recorded bullet wounds as abscesses . </P> <P> The 1,500 heavily armed police officers deployed to Soweto on 17 June carried weapons including automatic rifles, stun guns, and carbines . They drove around in armoured vehicles with helicopters monitoring the area from the sky . The South African Army was also ordered on standby as a tactical measure to show military force . Crowd control methods used by South African police at the time included mainly dispersement techniques . </P> <P> The number of people who died is usually given as 176 with estimates up to 700 . The original government figure claimed only 23 students were killed; the number of wounded was estimated to be over a thousand people . </P> <Table> <Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> This section does not cite any sources . Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources . Unsourced material may be challenged and removed . (February 2008) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) </Td> </Tr> </Table>

How many students were killed in the soweto uprising