Replies

Cremation for India crush victims

Grieving relatives are preparing to cremate around 300 Hindu pilgrims who died in a stampede at a religious festival in India on Tuesday.

The tragedy happened during a pilgrimage to the remote Mandhar Devi temple in western Maharashtra state.

Police say they believe the stampede was triggered by a fire which first engulfed some roadside stalls.

Rescue workers are still trying to collect the bodies of those who died and determine the exact death toll.

More corpses may be found in the wreckage of shops destroyed by the fire.

Also, around 100 people injured in the stampede are in a critical condition.

Many pilgrims were crushed and burned to death as the fire forced crowds into a narrow stairway leading to the hilltop temple.

The stampede occurred near the village of Wai, more than 200km (125 miles) south of Mumbai (Bombay), where pilgrims congregate every year at the temple to venerate a Hindu goddess.

This year more than 300,000 people had gathered, and the narrow path leading to the temple was jammed with worshippers, many of them women and children.

The funerals coincide with India's celebration of Republic Day, although festivities in Maharashtra were cancelled.

Frustration

The fire spread throughout the temple grounds, and was still burning in places on Tuesday night, although the main complex was safe.

It is still not clear what caused the fire, though it made have been the result of a short circuit.

Some witnesses said pilgrims began burning and looting roadside stalls after they became frustrated at long delays in gaining entry to the temple site.

The procession quickly became panicked and the steep narrow passage was jammed as crowds surged forward to avoid the flames.

A local police chief, V N Deshmukh, put the death toll at more than 300 and said that more than 200 were taken by bus to local hospitals, the AFP news agency reported.

Access to the temple was difficult, and it took police vehicles and ambulances several hours to reach the scene. As a result some of the injured later died.

Later on Tuesday, relatives arrived at hospitals to identify the bodies and take them home.

Difficult to police

Stampedes are not uncommon at Hindu religious festivals, which often attract millions of worshippers and are notoriously difficult to police.

The event at Wai takes place every year during the night of a full moon.

Pilgrims started arriving on Monday, ahead of the full moon on Tuesday night.

At least 39 people died in August 2003 when devotees panicked on the banks of a holy river 175km north-east of Bombay.

In 1999, 51 pilgrims died when a safety rope snapped at a Hindu shrine in southern India, and 50 were killed in 1986 in a stampede in the northern town of Haridwar.

In 1954, some 800 are thought to have died in the northern city of Allahabad - the worst such incident recorded.