Halloween crowd surge in Seoul leaves more than 140 dead and dozens injured

At least 146 people have been killed and more than 150 injured after being crushed by a large crowd pushing forward on a narrow street during Halloween festivities in the capital Seoul, South Korean officials say.

Warning: images and themes in this story may be distressing for some readers.

Choi Seong-beom, chief of Seoul’s Yongsan fire department, said the death toll could rise as emergency workers were continuing to transport the injured to hospitals.

He said many of the dead had been sent to hospitals while the bodies of the remaining 46 were still on the streets in the leisure district of Itaewon on Saturday night.

Witness Park Jung-Hoon said they arrived about 10pm to see something like "a war".

“We saw a scene from a movie in front of the hotel over there, like things happening during a war," he said.

Officials said it was believed people were crushed to death after a large crowd began pushing forward in a narrow alley near Hamilton Hotel, a major party spot in Seoul.

The incident took place at about 10:20pm local time.

A large number of people fell down in the alley during the festivities, Mr Choi said, with many of the party-goers wearing masks and Halloween costumes.

Many of the victims were women in their 20s, Mr Choi said.

Officials from the National Fire Agency and the Ministry of the Interior and Safety earlier said about 100 were injured and about 50 were being treated for cardiac arrest as of early Sunday.

More than 400 emergency workers and 140 vehicles from around the nation, including all available personnel in Seoul, were deployed to the streets to treat the injured.

The National Fire Agency separately said in a statement that officials were still trying to determine the exact number of emergency patients.

Foreigners were among those transferred to nearby hospitals.

TV footage and photos from the scene showed ambulance vehicles lined up in streets amid a heavy police presence and emergency workers moving the injured in stretchers.

Emergency workers and pedestrians were also seen performing CPR on people lying in the streets.

In one section, paramedics were seen checking on at least a dozen people who lying motionless under blue blankets.

Police, who were restricting traffic in nearby areas to speed up the transportation of the injured to hospitals across the city, also confirmed that dozens of people were being given CPR on Itaewon streets.

The Seoul metropolitan government issued emergency text messages urging people in the area to swiftly return home.

Some local media reports said the crush happened after a large number of people rushed to an Itaewon bar after hearing an unidentified celebrity visited there.

One eyewitness 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.

Local media said about 100,000 people flocked to Itaewon streets for the Halloween festivities, which were the biggest since the start of the pandemic following the easing of COVID-19 restrictions in recent months.

It was the first Halloween event in three years.

Some witnesses described the crowd becoming increasingly unruly and agitated as the evening deepened.

The Itaewon district is popular with young South Koreans and expatriates alike.

Its dozens of bars and restaurants were packed on Saturday for Halloween after businesses had suffered a sharp decline over three years of the pandemic.

Curfew on bars and restaurants and a limit of 10 people for private gatherings were lifted in April. An outdoor mask mandate was dropped in May.

President Yoon Suk-yeol presided over an emergency meeting with senior aides.

"The area is still chaotic so we are still trying to figure out the exact number of people injured," said Moon Hyun-joo, an official at the National Fire Agency.

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol issued a statement calling for officials to ensure swift treatment for those injured and review the safety of the festivity sites.

He also instructed the Health Ministry to swiftly deploy disaster medical assistance teams and secure beds in nearby hospitals to treat the injured.

ABC/wires