At least 27 people were crushed to death by a mob at a Hindu religious gathering in northern India, a medical official said Tuesday.
“We have 27 bodies at this stage… and bodies are still arriving,” Ram Mohan Tiwari, a senior medical official in Uttar Pradesh state, told AFP.
People had gathered to celebrate the Hindu god Shiva in the city of Hathras, 140 km (87 miles) southeast of New Delhi. Umesh Kumar Tripathi, another medical official, told AFP that the dead were 25 women and two men.
“There are also many injured people who have been hospitalized,” he said. “The cause is a stampede during a religious event.”
Fatal incidents are common at places of worship in India during major religious events.
At least 112 people died in 2016 after an explosion caused by fireworks in a temple where the Hindu New Year was being celebrated.
In 2013, 115 worshipers died in a stampede near a temple in Madhya Pradesh. Nearly 400,000 people had gathered when rumours spread that a bridge was about to collapse, causing the stampede.
At least 224 pilgrims died in 2008, and more than 400 were injured, during a stampede around a temple in the northern city of Jodhpur.
