At least 146 people died and around 150 others were injured overnight from Saturday to Sunday in a stampede in Seoul, where thousands of people had crowded the narrow streets of a district of the South Korean capital during Halloween celebrations.
“As of 4:00 a.m. Saturday, 146 people were killed and 150 injured,” Choi Seong-beom, a fire official from the South Korean capital, told reporters at the scene of the disaster.
“Trampled”
A previous assessment reported 120 dead and a hundred injured.
“The large number of victims is due to the fact that many people were trampled during the Halloween party,” he added.
The Yonhap news agency quoted an unidentified witness, who said the victims were crushed in crowd movements.
“People were on top of each other. Some were losing consciousness gradually, others were obviously dead,” he said.
The fire chief said 74 bodies had been sent to hospitals, and 46 more were now in a gymnasium.
“Cardiac arrests”
Firefighters in the South Korean capital first announced that dozens of people had suffered cardiac arrest in the Itaewon district of central Seoul.
In South Korea, rescue officials speak of cardiac arrest until a doctor has officially pronounced a person dead.
A fire department spokesman said 140 ambulances had been dispatched to the scene to attend to the victims.
The victims seem to have been caught in crowd movements in this district where Halloween celebrations gather a large number of people in the South Korean capital.
According to Yonhap, the stampede took place near the Hamilton Hotel, near which the crowd had rushed into a narrow alley.
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol has called for hospitals to be prepared to receive the injured, the presidency said.
Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon, who was visiting Europe, decided to return in a hurry due to the tragedy, according to Yonhap.
Bodies covered
Photographs released by Yonhap showed more than a dozen people lying in a street, with rescuers performing CPR on some of them, as police cordoned off the crowds.
According to video footage, around 20 bodies were covered in sheets or blankets, however, as rescuers made no attempt to revive them. Other victims were evacuated on stretchers to ambulances.
The Halloween celebrations this year are the first since the Covid-19 pandemic, in which South Koreans were forced to wear masks outdoors.