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Of the dead, 97 were female and 54 were male
Seoul:
At least 151 people died and more than 100 were injured in a stampede at a prominent market in South Korea’s capital Seoul, where a massive crowd had gathered for Halloween festivities.
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The crowd surge and crush happened in the capital Seoul, where local reports said as many as one lakh people, mostly in their teens and 20s, had gone to celebrate Halloween, clogging the area’s narrow alleyways and winding streets.
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President Yoon Suk-yeol declared a period of national mourning Sunday, saying the government would pay for the medical care of those injured and the funerals of those who died.
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The government “will thoroughly investigate the cause of the incident and make fundamental improvements to ensure the same accident does not occur again in the future,” the President said.
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Of the dead, 97 were female and 54 were male. The stampede, the deadliest in South Korea’s recent history, happened in a narrow downhill alley, with eyewitnesses describing scenes of panic as people “fell like dominoes”.
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Nineteen foreigners were among those killed in the deadly stampede at a Halloween event, the fire department said.
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Seoul authorities said they have also received 355 reports on missing people.
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Police and firemen were seen trying to revive people who’d gone into cardiac arrest amid chaos in narrow streets.
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Visuals from the scene showed scores of bodies spread on the pavement covered by bedsheets, and emergency workers loading even more bodies on stretchers into ambulances.
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“People were layered on top of others like a tomb. Some were gradually losing their consciousness while some looked dead by that point,”an eyewitness told news agency AFP.
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This year’s Halloween event was the first since the pandemic started in 2020 at which South Koreans have not been mandated to wear face masks outdoors.
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