At least 18 people have died in a crush at a railway station in India’s capital when surging crowds scrambled to catch trains to the world’s largest religious gathering, officials have said.
The Kumbh Mela attracts tens of millions of Hindu faithful every 12 years to the northern city of Prayagraj, and has a history of crowd-related disasters – including one last month, when at least 30 people died in another crush at the holy confluence of the Ganges, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati rivers.
The rush at the train station in Delhi on Saturday appeared to break out as crowds struggled to board trains for the ongoing event, which will end on 26 February.
The death toll included 10 women and three children, local media said.
Dr Ritu Saxena, the deputy medical superintendent of Lok Nayak hospital in Delhi, told Agence France-Presse: “I can confirm 15 deaths at the hospital. They don’t have any open injury. Most [likely died from] hypoxia or maybe some blunt injury but that would only be confirmed after an autopsy.
“There are also 11 others who are injured. Most of them are stable and have orthopaedic injuries.”
Broadcaster NDTV reported three more dead from the crush, quoting an official of another hospital in the city.
“I have been working as a coolie since 1981, but I never saw a crowd like this before,” a porter at the railway station was quoted as saying by the Times of India newspaper.
“People started colliding and fell on the escalator and stairs” when a platform for a special train departing for Prayagraj was suddenly shifted, the porter said.
The railways minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw, said a “high-level inquiry” had been ordered into the causes of the accident. Vaishnaw said additional special trains were being run from Delhi to clear the rush of devotees.
Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister, said on X: “My thoughts are with all those who have lost their loved ones. I pray that the injured have a speedy recovery. The authorities are assisting all those who have been affected by this stampede.”
The defence minister, Rajnath Singh, said he was “extremely pained by the loss of lives due to stampede” at the Delhi railway station.
“In this hour of grief, my thoughts are with the bereaved families. Praying for the speedy [recovery] of the injured,” Singh said in a social media post.
The governor of the capital, Vinai Kumar Saxena, said disaster management personnel had been told to deploy and “all hospitals are in readiness to address related exigencies”.
The six-week Kumbh Mela is the single biggest milestone in the Hindu religious calendar, and officials said about 500 million devotees have already visited the festival since it began last month.
More than 400 people died after they were trampled or drowned on a single day of the festival in 1954, one of the largest tolls in a crowd-related disaster globally.
Another 36 people were crushed to death in 2013, the last time the festival was staged in Prayagraj.
Agence France-Presse contributed to this report
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