At least 150 Halloween revellers are now known to have been killed in a horrifying stampede in South Korea.
Tens of thousands had gathered in Itaewon, the party district of the capital, Seoul, when a crush in a narrow sloped alleyway saw hundreds of people fall to the ground, being trampled by other panicked partygoers.
According to local media reports, the disaster began at around 10.30pm local time when a large number of people rushed to enter a bar, having heard that a celebrity was visiting it.
READ MORE: Halloween party chaos with '149 dead' as bodies strewn across floor in reported stampede
Halloween costumes added to the confusion, with one survivor saying that she saw a police officer screaming, but she wasn’t sure was a real police officer because so many people were wearing fancy dress outfits.
One eyewitness, Sung Sehyun, told CNN that people were so tightly packed in the narrow alley that they could barely breathe:“I was lucky to get through (but an) hour later, I heard people got killed because people got stamped on … and people got jammed together.”
Another person who survived the crush, Raphael Rashid, told the BBC he had arrived in the area at about 7pm.
“It was very clear that there were so many people here, probably the most I’ve ever seen in Itaewon and the crowds were just gathering more and more…"
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“Towards 10pm it was clear that there were far too many people and something was unravelling," he added.
"There are tens of thousands of people. So many people — to the point we were being crushed on the pavement, to the point where we had to spill on to the road where there were cars.”
Videos of the event uploaded to social media showed people in Halloween costumes being pushed through the narrow streets, with some trying to scramble up the walls on either side to try to save themselves from the crush.
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Most recent reports put the number of dead at 151, but that figure is likely to climb.
The city’s disaster headquarters said this morning that 24 of the 104 people being treated for injuries were also in critical condition.
Choi Seong-beom, the chief of Seoul’s Yongsan fire department, said that 19 foreign tourists were among the dead.
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The local authorities issued emergency text messages ordering anyone remaining in the area to return home.
More than 1,700 emergency response workers and 140 vehicles were deployed.
South Korea’s Minister of the Interior and Safety Lee Sang-min told reporters that the horrific incident was “not a problem that could have been solved in advance,” adding that there had been “various disturbances and demonstrations” in other parts of the capital on Saturday.
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