Dozens of people have been killed and many others were injured in a crowd crush at the world’s largest religious festival in northern India, police said.
“Thirty devotees have unfortunately died,” senior police officer Vaibhav Krishna told a press conference on Wednesday. “Ninety injured were taken to the hospital” after the stampede at the Mahakumbh Mela in the city of Prayagraj in Uttar Pradesh.
The incident occurred early in the morning near the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers.
As pilgrims rushed to participate in a sacred day of ritual bathing, people sleeping and sitting on the ground near the rivers told the AFP news agency that they were trampled by huge swells of devotees coming towards them in the darkness.
Footage of rescue teams carrying victims away from the religious site showed clothes, shoes and other discarded belongings strewn across the ground, as police officers carried stretchers bearing what appeared to be bodies of victims draped with blankets to waiting ambulances.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi called the stampede “extremely sad” and offered his “deepest condolences” to relatives of those killed.
Yogi Adityanath, chief minister of Uttar Pradesh state where the festival city of Prayagraj is located, said the stampede was set off when some devotees tried to jump barricades put up to manage crowds.
Credit: aljazeera.com
