168 die in Hindu temple stampede
AT least 168 people died yesterday in a stampede at a Hindu temple, with at least 450 more injured.
A handful of people fell over when a wall collapsed as they were climbing the steep slope to the Chamunda temple in the northern state of Rajasthan.
In the panic, rumours of a bomb spread quickly, triggering the catastrophic crush, with more than 12,000 stampeding.
As the scale of the disaster sunk in, at the start of the Navaratri festival, volunteers tried to revive the dead and dying in the streets. They scooped up the injured and tried to carry them to hospital.
A child was filmed by television crews, crying over her father’s lifeless body, wailing: “Daddy, please get up.”
As the pilgrims higher up fell or rushed to get away, many were trampled underfoot, while still more suffocated after they fell.
Rajiv Dasoth, a local police inspector general, said: “The situation is under control and all the injured are being taken care of in hospitals.”
However, there were reports that many hospitals were struggling, having run out of oxygen supplies, and were overwhelmed as volunteers and rescue services continued to deliver the injured.
The historic Chamunda Devi temple is inside the 15th century Mehrangarh Fort, high above Jodhpur’s “blue city”.
It is popular with tourists and, last year, it was the venue for Liz Hurley’s celebrity-strewn marriage to Arun Nayar.
Hindus gathered across India yesterday to celebrate the start of the nine-day Navaratri festival, which celebrates the goddess of wealth and knowledge.
There have been numerous deadly temple stampedes over the years because local police seem ill-equipped to cope with thousands of worshippers, and have little training in crowd control. Just last month 145 pilgrims died in a similar crush outside a temple in the mountains of northern India, after rumours of a landslide triggered panic.
And at least 265 died in a crush near a temple in the Maharashtra state in January 2005.
In Iraq 1,005 Muslims died when a Shi’ite stampede over the Tigris river in Baghdad was sparked by rumours of a suicide bomber, also in 2005.
