Shanghai New Year stampede kills 35

SHANGHAI, Jan 1 : (Xinhua) -- At least 35 revelers were killed and 42 others injured in a stampede at New Year celebrations late Wednesday in Shanghai, local authorities confirmed.

The tragedy happened on a crowded square of Shanghai's gleaming Bund area at around 11:35 p.m. There are 25 female among the deceased whose ages range from 16 to 36, said the authorities of Shanghai, a metropolis home to a population of over 23 million.

Most of the injured are youths at around 20 years old with a majority of them being female. There are also college students and children, medical sources told Xinhua.

Police are investigating the cause of the stampede.

The Bund, a stretch of riverbank on the west side of the Huangpu River in Shanghai, is a popular destination for New Year celebrations, as historical architecture and skyscrapers along the river show dazzling lights at night.

    

     HELLISH SCENE

    

Survivors described the stampede as "horrific and hellish."

    

Some said they were standing on the steps adjoining the major road and the sightseeing platform when the deadly incident happened.

"The steps leading to the platform were full of people. Some wanted to get down and some wanted to go up," said a witness who gave her surname as Yin. "We were caught in the middle and saw some girls falling while screaming. Then people started to fall down, row by row."

The woman said she covered two kids in front of her with arms in the chaos. Her own son followed her.

"When we brought him out of the crowd, his forehead bruising, two deep-creased scars on his neck, and his mouth and nose all bleeding," said the teary mother.

Dirty shoe prints were all over the clothes of her son when the 12-year-old boy came to safety.

"The crowds were in panic. We stood in the crowd, feeling squeezed almost out of breath," another witness surnamed Yu said. "Some yelled for help but the noise was too loud."

 Other survivors said police rushed the scene and tried to pull out people stuck in but generally failed.

"The whole chaos lasted a dozen minutes, then some injured were seen being carried out of the crowd," Yu said.

"MONEY THROWING"

Some survivors said the stampede was triggered when some started threw coupons that look like "U.S. dollar banknotes" to revelers outside a bar in the windy night.

 Witness Wu Tao said some coupons were being thrown from a building's third-floor window near the Bund and people standing along the river bank started to scramble for those coupons.

The coupon looks like a 100 U.S. dollar banknote with "M18" printed in the middle, a reference to the bar of the same name on the Bund.

Phone calls to the bar were immediately hung up after getting through.

Some said on social networking websites that they found pictures on the bar owner showing off those coupons before the incident.

But the blogger, who called herself Chaojidadadashabao_MissShen" on the Sina Weibo, denied she threw away any coupons in the incident.

Stampedes occurred in China mainly due to safety loopholes. In September 2014, six school student were killed in a stampede at a primary school in Yunnan Province after a stairway was blocked.

In January 2014, a mosque stampede killed 14 people and injured another 10 in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. In 2004, a stampede on a bridge in suburban Beijing killed 37 during a local lantern festival.