44 crushed to death in Israel stampede
TEL AVIV, April 30, 2021
At least 44 people were crushed to death and over 150 people were injured at an overcrowded ultra-Orthodox religious festival in Israel last night.
Witnesses described scenes of chaos in which people died in front of their eyes, said a Reuters report.
More than 50,000 people had thronged to the Galilee tomb of 2nd-century sage Rabbi Shim Bar Yochai for annual Lag B'Omer commemorations that include all-night prayer, mystical songs and dance.
Six of the injured are in critical condition and 18 are in serious condition, according to emergency response teams, Haaretz' website said.
Since the site was so densely attended, search and rescue authorities say they struggled to evacuate trapped people. The stampede was caused after some revellers slipped on steps, causing dozens more people to fall over, according to police sources.
Witnesses said people were asphyxiated or trampled in a tightly packed passageway around three metres (yards) wide, some going unnoticed until the PA system sounded an appeal to disperse. Crowds packed the Mount Meron slope in defiance of warnings to maintain social distancing against the coronavirus, the report said.
Medics said there had been a stampede in the men's section of the gender-segregated festival. Casualties included children.
Some of the dead had yet to be identified and family members of those attending the festival who were still missing called in to radio stations asking for assistance in finding them.
Videos posted on social media showed ultra-Orthodox men clambering desperately through gaps in sheets of torn corrugated iron to escape the crush. Bodies lay on stretchers in a corridor, covered in foil blankets.
An injured man lying on a hospital bed described to reporters how the crush began when a line of people in the front of the surging crowd simply collapsed.
"A pyramid of one on top of another was formed. People were piling up one on top of the other. I was in the second row. The people in the first row - I saw people die in front of my eyes," he said.
