At least 27 individuals lost their lives in a Hindu religious event in northern India due to being crushed, and many others were injured.
Government medical personnel are worried that the number of fatalities may rise further.
Fatal accidents often occur at religious gatherings during significant festivals in India, which attract millions of devotees to sacred locations.
On Tuesday, a large congregation assembled near Hathras, approximately 140 kilometers (90 miles) southeast of New Delhi, to listen to a sermon by a religious leader.
“We have received 27 bodies so far,” Uttar Pradesh state senior medical officer Ram Mohan Tiwari told AFP.
“It’s very hard to say the exact figure, as bodies are still coming. We do not have the number of injured.”
Witnesses and local media reports said the victims were crushed to death as the audience left the sermon.
“When the sermon finished, everyone started running out,” Shakuntala, a woman who gave only one name, told the Press Trust of India news agency.
“People fell in a drain by the road. They started falling one on top of the other and got crushed to death.”
Local chief medical officer Umesh Kumar Tripathi told reporters that most of the dead were women.
“Many injured have also been admitted,” he said.
Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath “expressed condolences” to relatives of those killed, his office said on social media platform X.
“He has directed the district administration officials to immediately take the injured to the hospital for their proper treatment and to speed up the relief work at the spot,” it said.
Adityanath’s office also said an investigation had been ordered into the cause of the incident.
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