At least 149 people, mostly teenagers and young adults in their 20s, were killed in a crush when a huge crowd celebrating Halloween surged into an alley in a nightlife area of the South Korean capital Seoul on Saturday night, emergency officials said.<br /><br />A further 65 people were injured in the melee in Seoul's Itaewon district, Choi Sung-beom, head of the Yongsan Fire Station, said in a briefing at the scene.<br /><br />Nineteen of the injured were in serious condition and receiving emergency treatment, the officials said, adding the death toll could rise.<br /><br />It was the first Halloween event in Seoul in three years after the country lifted COVID restrictions and social distancing. Many of the partygoers were wearing masks and Halloween costumes.<br /><br />Some witnesses described the crowd becoming increasingly unruly and agitated as the evening deepened. The incident took place at about 10:20 p.m local time.<br /><br />"A number of people fell during a Halloween festival, and we have a large number of casualties," Choi said. Many of those killed were near a nightclub.<br /><br />Many of the victims were women in their twenties, Choi said.<br /><br />Witnesses described chaotic scenes moments before the stampede, with the police on hand in anticipation of the Halloween event at times having trouble maintaining control of the crowds.<br /><br />Moon Ju-young, 21, said there were clear signs of trouble in the alleys before the incident.<br /><br />"It was at least more than 10 times crowded than usual," he said.<br /><br />Social media footage showed hundreds of people packed in the narrow, sloped alley crushed and immobile as emergency officials and police tried to pull them free.<br /><br />Choi, the Yongsan district fire chief, said all the deaths were likely from the crush in the single narrow alley.<br /><br />Other footage showed chaotic scenes of fire officials and citizens treating dozens of people who appeared to be unconscious.<br /><br />Fire officials and witnesses said people continued to pour into the narrow alley that was already packed wall-to-wall, when those at the top of the sloped street fell, sending people below them toppling over others.<br /><br />An unnamed woman who said she was the mother of a survivor said her daughter and others were trapped for more than an hour before being pulled from the crush of people in the alley.<br /><br />A witness said a makeshift morgue was set up in a building adjacent to the scene. About four dozen bodies were carried out later on wheeled stretchers and moved to a government facility to identify the victims, according to the witness.<br /><br />The Itaewon district is popular with young South Koreans and expatriates alike, its dozens of bars and restaurants packed on Saturday for Halloween after businesses had suffered a sharp decline over three years of the pandemic.<br /><br />"You would see big crowds at Christmas and fireworks ... but this was several ten-folds bigger than any of that," Park Jung-hoon, 21.<br /><br />Two foreigners were among the dead, and others were transferred to nearby hospitals.<br /><br />
