‘Fell down like dominoes’: Witnesses recall horrific scenes at Seoul’s Halloween stampede

The bustling alley of Seoul's lively Itaewon district, known for its night life soon turned into a death trap for many as the crowd that had gathered for the first major Halloween celebration since South Korea lifted most Covid-19 restrictions went out of control leading to a stampede on Saturday.

According to an AFP report, nearly 100,000 people turned up for Halloween festivities in Itaewon's narrow alley which did not have enough space to accomodate such a rush.

150 Party goers, mostly in their teens and 20s, clad-in Halloween costumes were crushed in the stampede in the clogged alley of Itaewon while over 100 are injured.

Jeon Ga-eul, 30, who was having a drink at a bar at the moment the stampede hit told AFP, "My friend said: something terrible is happening outside,". "I said: what are you talking about? And then I went outside to see and there were people doing CPR in the street."

The crowd was exceptionally dense on Saturday night, eyewitnesses told AFP, with Jeon saying that even ahead of the disaster, he had felt unsafe.

"There were so many people just being pushed around and I got caught in the crowd and I couldn't get out at first too," he said.

One eye-witness described on Twitter the panic that started when people "kept pushing down" into the already crowded alleyway.

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This resulted in "other people screaming and falling down like dominoes," the Twitter user with the handle "jkaesthet1c" wrote.

"I thought I would be crushed to death too as people kept pushing without realising there were people falling down at the start of the stampede," they added.

Some survivors claimed that nearby stores and establishments on the alleyway had blocked people from coming in to escape the crush.

Meanwhile, South Korea's President Yoon Suk-yeol has declared a period of national mourning Sunday and has ordered a probe into the tragedy.

With AFP inputs