NEWS

This was the tragedy of Seoul


The death party, Halloween, ended in death at a full party. South Korea awoke Sunday with its most tragic dawn after daylight revealed the disastrous scale of Saturday night’s stampede in Itaewon, one of Seoul’s most popular bar areas.

After a horrific day of counting and identifying bodies in hospitals, the official number reached at least 153 deaths, including 22 foreigners, and 133 wounded, Mostly young people in their twenties who were celebrating Halloween. But the authorities fear that the number will rise because 37 people were seriously injured. Among the dead were 97 women and 54 men and among them, in addition to South Koreans, were young men from China, Russia, the United States, Norway, France, Austria, Iran, Thailand, Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Kazakhstan. and Uzbekistan. At the moment, no Spanish victim has been reported.

Shock reigns across South Korea as it is the worst tragedy since the sinking of the Seoul liner in 2014, in which 304 passengers were killed, mostly teenagers from a school on their way to vacation on the tourist island of Jeju. Just like that time, the deaths are returning to young people, who filled Itaewon bars and clubs for the first Halloween celebration after a three-year ban due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

As recounted by survivors and witnesses on social media, the congestion occurred in a steep alley near the famous Hamilton Hotel, which is usually a meeting point for young people who are left out in the area. “People kept pressing down the alley, causing many people to fall like dominoes,” one survivor who narrowly escaped said on Twitter. «I thought I’d be a crush too Because the people behind them kept pushing without realizing that many people had fallen at the beginning of the stampede,” he detailed the suffering felt by the thousands of people trapped.

See also  Al menos 17 personas mueren en un accidente de autobús en México

“Who would have thought that I would travel to Korea tomorrow, but to say goodbye to the love of my life…and on his birthday. “Life is so unfair,” he wrote in Spanish on Twitter. Gabriella, Accompanying his message of a broken heart. The young woman confirmed the death of “without words for the pain” she suffered Boyfriend Choi Bosung, 24 years oldand his friends, after the first tweet in which he explained that they were missing and that someone had found his jacket and mobile phone on the ground.

“Who would have thought that I would travel to Korea tomorrow, but to say goodbye to the love of my life… and on his birthday?”

As evidenced by the videos circulating on the Internet, in an alley Only four meters wide and 40 . longThousands of people were unable to move or could barely breathe, many of them dressed in evil Halloween costumes. Due to the lack of air in the crowd, many of the victims lost consciousness and fell to the ground and were trampled by the avalanche. “People fell, stacked on top of each other as in a tomb. A witness told Yonhap News Agency that some gradually lost consciousness and others appeared dead at the time.

Another survivor, a 20-year-old surnamed Park, noted that everything happened suddenly, when the crowd headed to the sinister alley. A short person like me couldn’t breathe. She managed to survive because she was located on one side of the alley. Park staggered The people in the middle seemed to suffer the worst of it.


The human avalanche occurred at 10:20 pm local time (2:20 pm Spanish time) last Saturday in an alley in the Itaewon neighborhood, in Seoul, near the Hamilton Hotel.

About 100,000 people participated in the Halloween celebration. The alley, which is located on a slope and is about three meters wide and 40 long, and 120 square meters long, has become a mousetrap

The conflict and panic caused a crowd that killed more than 150 people (about two dozen foreigners) and injured many others.

Police have received 350 complaints about the disappearance of victims who may be scattered in various hospitals in the South Korean capital

Line: private details / Reuters / ABC

Itaewonone of the most popular bar areas in Seoul

The human avalanche occurred at 10:20 pm local time (2:20 pm Spanish time) last Saturday in an alley in the Itaewon neighborhood, in Seoul, near the Hamilton Hotel.

Police have received 350 complaints about the disappearance of victims who may be scattered in various hospitals in the South Korean capital

Line: private details / Reuters / ABC

rescue delay

According to a survivor reported by Yonhap, who preferred not to be identified, the rescue of those trapped in Montenera was delayed because emergency teams had to enter the alley from behind, as the main streets of Itaewon were crowded to celebrate. Halloween.

In addition, other witnesses blamed the tragedy on the owners of nearby pubs and clubs, who prevented those trapped in the alley from entering, thus preventing the crowds that formed from defecating. “It seems that the victims are more dangerous because there are people who tried to escape to the shops nearby, but they were thrown into the street because they were already closed,” complains one survivor, who hides his identity.

whatever, Pictures and videos circulating on the Internet are terrifying. In addition to showing the crowd trapped in the alley while music from bars continues to play, other photos show nurses’ attempts to revive the wounded by giving them cardiovascular massages. In other shots, you can see long rows of body bags lining the sidewalks.

The tragedy erupted just after 10 p.m. on Saturday (4 p.m., peninsular Spanish time), when emergency phone numbers in Seoul began receiving a barrage of calls from Itaewon warning of the stampede and suffocation suffered by those left in the crowd or run over by the crew. “Her boyfriend called me around midnight, crying and saying that Yi Seol was dead, that she had been under a pile of people for more than an hour and that he tried to get her out, but he wasn’t able to,” said Yonhap, the mother of a 19-year-old girl, Ahn Yoon Seon, at the hospital where she identified her body. The festival of the dead, Halloween, is over with the real dead.



Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Back to top button