At least 153 killed in crowd crush during Halloween festivities in Seoul

Revellers reported chaotic scenes due to the sheer volume of people on the streets well before the deadly crush occurred at about 10.20pm, when a large crowd, many wearing Halloween costumes, surged into a steep, narrow alleyway off the main thoroughfare near the Hamilton Hotel.

Choi Sung-beom, the head of the Yongsan fire station, told reporters at the scene that 82 people had been injured, 19 of them seriously. The deaths included 22 foreigners, he said. Emergency workers warned the death toll could rise further.

Witnesses reported seeing crowds surging in different directions and people losing their footing on the slope, causing a domino effect. Videos posted online showed people trying to pull others out from the crush by their arms.

Most victims were in their teens and 20s, with 97 identified as female and 54 as male. At least 20 foreigners were among the dead, the foreign ministry said, including citizens of the US, Uzbekistan, Austria, Norway, Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Iran and Sri Lanka. One French national, three Russians and four Chinese people also died, their governments said.

Flags at government agencies and other public buildings were lowered to half-mast across South Korea on Sunday. Numerous Halloween parades, concerts and other events were cancelled and shops around the country took down Halloween displays and decorations.

More than 400 emergency workers and 140 vehicles from around the nation, including all available personnel in Seoul, were deployed to the streets of Itaewon on Saturday night to treat the injured.

TV footage and photos from the scene showed ambulance vehicles queued up in streets amid a heavy police presence and emergency workers moving the injured on stretchers. Emergency workers and passers-by were also seen performing CPR on people lying in the streets.

In one clip, paramedics were seen checking the status of a dozen or more people who lay motionless under blue blankets. Police restricted traffic in nearby areas to speed up the transportation of the injured to hospitals across the city.

An unnamed woman said her daughter and others had been trapped for more than an hour before being pulled from the crush alive.

Another witness said a makeshift morgue had been set up in a building adjacent to the scene. About four dozen bodies were carried out on wheeled stretchers and moved to a government facility to identify the victims, according to the witness.

The Itaewon district is popular with young South Koreans and expatriates alike. Its dozens of bars and restaurants were packed on Saturday for Halloween after businesses had suffered a sharp decline over three years of the pandemic.

With the easing of the Covid pandemic, curfews on bars and restaurants and a limit of 10 people for private gatherings were lifted in April. An outdoor mask mandate was dropped in May.

This was the deadliest crushing disaster in South Korean history. In 2005, 11 people were killed and about 60 others injured at a pop concert in the southern city of Sangju.

Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report