Dozens killed in stampede during China New Year's Eve celebrations

 
Crush: People try to escape the stampede in Shanghai
Standard Reporter1 January 2015

Dozens of people have been crushed to death in a stampede during New Year celebrations in China.

Thirty-five revellers died in the disaster in Shanghai's historic waterfront area, while another 46 people were receiving treatment in hospital.

A Shanghai government statement said 14 of those were seriously injured.

The chaos hit around half an hour before midnight, with witnesses saying people were scrambling for coupons that looked like dollar bills as they were thrown out of a third floor window.

Local reports said there were 25 women and 10 men who died. They are believed to be aged between 26 and 16 and are thought to include three Taiwanese and one Malaysian.

At one of the hospitals where the injured were being treated, police brought photos out of dead victims who they had not been able to identify, causing dozens of waiting relatives to crowd around the table. Not everyone could see, and young women who looked at photographs someone had taken on a mobile phone broke into tears.

A saleswoman in her 20s, who refused to give her name, said she had been celebrating the New Year with three friends. "I heard people screaming, someone fell, people shouted 'don't rush,"' she said. "There were so many people and I couldn't stand properly."

Xia Shujie, vice president of Shanghai No. 1 People's Hospital, told media that some of the people brought to them were suffering from serious suffocation.

Xinhua said the deaths and injuries occurred at Chen Yi Square, which is in Shanghai's popular riverfront Bund area, an avenue lined with art deco buildings from the 1920s and 1930s when Shanghai was home to international banks and trading houses. The area is often jammed with spectators for major events.

Police were this morning standing guard at Shanghai No. 1 People's Hospital, where many of the injured were being treated.

Earlier, relatives desperately seeking information had tried to push past guards who used a bench to hold them back from the hospital.

Video of Shanghai streets posted after the stampede showed piles of discarded shoes amid the debris.

One photo from the scene showed at least one person doing chest compressions on a shirtless man while several other people lay on the ground nearby, amid debris.

"We were down the stairs and wanted to move up and those who were upstairs wanted to move down, so we were pushed down by the people coming from upstairs," an injured man told Shanghai TV. "All those trying to move up fell down on the stairs."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in