The sale of the second batch of Olympic tickets has been suspended after the booking system crashed under overwhelming demand on Tuesday, the first day tickets became available.

The Beijing Organizing Committee for the 2008 Olympic Games (BOCOG) said Tuesday night in a statement that they had decided to temporarily halt domestic ticket sales to improve the technical system and will announce new ticketing information on November 5.

"Because of the overwhelming volume of page visits, the technical system was unable to perform the tasks well enough, and many applicants were unable to successfully submit their applications," said the statement posted on BOCOG's website.

"We sincerely apologize to the public," it added.

The first-come-first-serve scheme had 1.85 million tickets on sale through the booking website, a hotline and 1,000 designated branches of the Bank of China.

But demand was much higher than organizers anticipated. According to the Beijing Olympic Ticketing Center, the official ticketing website (www.tickets.beijing2008.cn) saw 8 million hits in the first hour starting 9 a.m., while the ticketing hotline received 3.8 million calls.

About 43,000 tickets were successfully purchased before the system crashed half an hour after the sales started, more than 90 percent of them through the ticketing website, said Rong Jun, head of the Olympic ticketing center.

A total of 7 million tickets are available for the Games, with some 75 percent reserved for domestic sale. The first 1.6 million tickets were allocated after a lottery earlier this year. The third phase - from April to August next year - will also sell tickets on a first-come, first-serve basis.