On the evening of October 29th local time, in Itaewon, Yongsan District, Seoul, South Korea, a large number of people celebrating Halloween flocked into a small alley, and a fatal stampede occurred on a downhill section. As of the morning of the 30th, the number of deaths in the accident has increased to 151.
Local time on October 30, 2022, Seoul, South Korea, there was a stampede accident in Itaewon . The 119 rescue team members who rushed to the scene were sending the injured to the hospital.
According to the latest news from the South Korean fire department on the 30th, the stampede has killed 151 people and injured 82 people, most of which are teenagers and young people in their 20s. Among the victims, there were 19 foreigners. According to @CCTV News, the latest news: The Chinese Embassy in South Korea confirmed to the reporter of the Taiwan Taiwan that three Chinese citizens have been killed in the accident, and the embassy is communicating with local police and other relevant departments.
According to the Seoul Municipal Government on the 30th, the department has received about 270 reports of missing persons related to stampedes during the Itaewon Halloween party and is handing them over to the police for processing.
South Korean President Yoon Seo-yeol 30th on the morning of the 430th, speaking to the whole people on the stampede accident in the Le Tae-yuan Prefecture House in Seoul, announcing that the aftermath will come to an end today is a national mourning period. He promised that the government would thoroughly investigate the cause of the accident and instructed the Ministry of Administrative Safety and other relevant departments to carry out emergency inspections on celebrations in various places.
This is the first Halloween event held in Seoul in the past three years after South Korea announced the lifting of epidemic restrictions and social distancing. Images leaked from social media showed that at least hundreds of people were crowded in a narrow, sloped alley at the time of the accident. Rescuers and police tried to pull them out, but they were pressed out of motion.
Reuters 30 quoted witnesses to describe the chaotic scene before the stampede incident. According to some witnesses, as the night deepened, the crowd became increasingly unruly and excited. Wen Zhuying, 21, said there were obvious signs of chaos in the alley before the incident. He said: "The crowding here is more than 10 times that of usual." The
accident occurred at around 10:20 on the evening of the 29th. Yonhap News Agency reported earlier on the 430th that a large number of people gathered on the downhill road just 4 meters wide next to the Hamilton Hotel in Itaewon, which caused a tragedy. A person at the scene told Yonhap News Agency that after 10 o'clock that night, someone fell in an alley next to the Hamilton Hotel, and the people behind them also fell one by one and squeezed them layer by layer.
" Nikkei Shimbun " quoted South Korean fire department officials and witnesses as saying that the crowd continued to pour into narrow alleys that had already been packed with people, and when people at the front of the slope fell, the people behind them were pushed down by others. A woman who asked not to be named said she was the mother of a survivor whose daughter and others were trapped for more than an hour before being pulled out of the crowded crowd in the alley.
Reuters quoted another witness as saying that on the evening of the 29th, a temporary morgue was set up in a building near the accident site. Later, about dozens of bodies were carried out by rescuers on wheel stretchers and transferred to government facilities to confirm the identity of the victim.
There are rumors that the cause of the accident was caused by the crowd to watch the stars rush up at once, or some people ate candy containing drug ingredients. But Yonhap News Agency reported that police said they had not received any reports of the accident related to drugs. As of now, the specific cause of the accident has not been found out.
South Korean fire department earlier reported that it had received dozens of reports of a large number of people near the Hamilton Hotel being squeezed and had difficulty breathing since around 10:15 p.m. on the 29th. After the incident, dozens of people fell on the road near the Hamilton Hotel and underwent CPR.
