{"id":29451,"date":"2016-10-15T10:06:50","date_gmt":"2016-10-15T10:06:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/stampede-kills-dozens-of-hindu-pilgrims-in-india\/"},"modified":"2016-10-15T10:06:26","modified_gmt":"2016-10-15T10:06:26","slug":"stampede-kills-dozens-of-hindu-pilgrims-in-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/stampede-kills-dozens-of-hindu-pilgrims-in-india\/","title":{"rendered":"Stampede kills dozens of Hindu pilgrims in India"},"content":{"rendered":"

{At least 24 people die in a stampede at a religious gathering on the outskirts of the northern Indian city of Varanasi.}<\/p>\n

At least 24 people have been killed and dozens injured in a stampede at a Hindu religious ceremony in northern India, according to police.<\/p>\n

Saturday’s crush happened on the outskirts of Varanasi, a city in Uttar Pradesh state known for its temples, as people tried to cross a crowded bridge over the Ganges river.<\/p>\n

Police officer S.K. Bhagat said that organisers were expecting 3,000 Hindu devotees at the ceremony, but that more than 70,000 thronged the ashram of a local Hindu religious leader, Jai Baba Gurudev, on the banks of the Ganges River.<\/p>\n

Millions of Hindus go to Varanasi every year to pray and wash away their sins by taking a dip in the river.<\/p>\n

“We were not prepared for such a large crowd,” Raj Bahadur, a spokesman for the organisers, told the AP news agency.<\/p>\n

The stampede occurred as police started turning back people from the overcrowded Rajgahard bridge, the Press Trust of India news agency cited Bahadur as saying.<\/p>\n

That triggered a rumour among the devotees that the bridge had collapsed, and they started running for safety, he said.<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he was deeply saddened by the tragedy. “I have spoken to officials and asked them to ensure all possible help to those affected,” he tweeted.<\/p>\n

Two police officers at the scene of the stampede said that officials were now struggling to deter pilgrims from entering a religious site near the bridge.<\/p>\n

“We are deploying over 100 police officers to control the crowd. People are in a state of panic,” Ravi Tyagi, a police officer, told Reuters news agency.<\/p>\n

Ravindra Sharma, who was injured in the stampede, said his teenage daughter was missing and the authorities were unable to trace her.<\/p>\n

“We came to seek the blessings of our god, only god can help me find her,” he said.<\/p>\n

Deadly stampedes are fairly common during Indian religious festivals, where large crowds gather in small areas with few safety or crowd control measures.<\/p>\n

In October 2013, a stampede in Madhya Pradesh state in central India killed more than 110 people, mostly women and children.<\/p>\n

\"Deadly<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{At least 24 people die in a stampede at a religious gathering on the outskirts of the northern Indian city of Varanasi.} At least 24 people have been killed and dozens injured in a stampede at a Hindu religious ceremony in northern India, according to police. Saturday’s crush happened on the outskirts of Varanasi, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-29451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29451\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29451"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=29451"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=29451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}