The President and Vice President offer condolences to the Korean President on the victims of the accident
Mourning in South Korea after 153 people were killed in a stampede in the capital, Seoul
Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon (centre) inspects the scene of an accident as a crowd rushed into a narrow alleyway in Seoul.
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The cordoned off area where the stampede occurred.
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His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the State, sent a cable of condolences to President Yoon Seok-yeol, President of the Republic of South Korea, for the victims of the stampede that occurred during the celebrations held in the Itaewon area in the center of the capital, Seoul, and resulted in a number of deaths. His Highness wished a speedy recovery to the injured.
His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, also sent a similar cable of condolences to President Yoon Sok Yeol.
The South Korean president declared a public mourning yesterday, after about 153 people were crushed to death in a stampede on Halloween in a busy area, Saturday night, in Seoul.
"My heart is heavy, and it is hard for me to contain my grief," President Yoon Seok Yeol, who went to the scene yesterday morning, wearing a green ambulance, said in a televised speech, declaring national mourning.
The president offered his condolences to the victims, mostly teenagers and young men in their twenties, and wished a speedy recovery to the injured, in one of the worst disasters in South Korea.
"This is truly tragic," he said in a statement.
A tragedy and disaster that should not have happened in the heart of Seoul.”
Emergency officials said a huge crowd celebrating Halloween in the popular Itaewon neighborhood stormed into a narrow lane on Saturday evening.
They added that the death toll could rise.
Choi Seung-bum, head of the Yongsan Fire Station, told a news briefing on the site that 82 people were injured, 19 of whom were in serious condition.
He added that 22 foreigners had died.
As of midday yesterday, the Interior Ministry said that at least 90% of the victims had been identified, and that the delay related to some foreign nationals and teenagers who had not yet issued identity cards.
South Korean technology and mobile game companies withdrew their Halloween promotions after the tragedy.
Twenty-four hours before the disaster, there were already warning signs that the festivities would attract potentially dangerous huge numbers of people, and relatives of the victims pointed to an apparent lack of crowd control.
Early yesterday, fashion and personal belongings mingled with bloodstains in the alley.
Survivors wrapped in blankets gathered among crowds of emergency workers, police and the media.
Many of the dead were near a nightclub, Choi said, noting that many of the victims were women in their twenties, while the foreign dead included people from China, Iran, Uzbekistan, Norway, Russia, the United States, France, Australia, Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Austria.
Witnesses reported that chaos erupted before the stampede, and the vigilant police were sometimes finding it difficult to control the crowds. Interior Minister Lee Sang Min said the expected crowd size in Itaewon was not much different from previous years, so I think the number of personnel deployed was similar. for previous years.
Fire officials and witnesses said people continued to pour into the street even after it was full, with no place to set foot, when those at the top of the slope fell to topple the others.
A makeshift mortuary was set up in a building next to the scene.
A Reuters witness said about 40 bodies were taken on stretchers to a government facility to identify the victims.
World leaders offered their condolences, including US President Joe Biden, Chinese President Xi Jinping, French Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
President Yoon held an emergency meeting with his top aides and ordered the formation of a task force to secure resources to treat the wounded and launch a comprehensive investigation into the cause of the disaster.
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