Over 150 people were killed in a stampede during a Halloween festival.

On Saturday, a large number of people were gathered in Itaewon district of Seoul, South Korea for a Halloween festival. The event had attracted tens of thousands of patrons, both locals and foreign tourists, as this was the first major Halloween celebration since COVID restrictions were lifted. During this event, a massive surge of people attempted to funnel through a narrow alleyway, resulting in a number of them being knocked prone and, ultimately, trampled. This crowd crush incident has resulted in the deaths of 154 individuals, 26 of whom were foreign nationals.

“I am engulfed with sorrow and responsibility as the president in charge of the lives and safety of our people, as I think about the bereaving families suffering from the loss of their loved ones,” South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said at a meeting prior to visiting a memorial for the departed this morning. “My heart breaks so much at the tragic loss especially of the young people, whose dreams now cannot see the light.”

An investigation to determine the precise cause of the crowd crush and the factors that led to it is underway. Eyewitnesses and survivors of the incident have laid the blame on local police, claiming that their presence was insufficient to corral the patrons away from dangerous areas.

“It was foreseen that a large number of people would gather there. But we didn’t expect that large-scale casualties would occur due to the gathering of many people,” Hong Ki-hyun, chief of the National Police Agency’s Public Order Management Bureau, told reporters Monday.

“I was told that police officers on the scene didn’t detect a sudden surge in the crowd,” he said, adding: “I regret the error in judgment call of these officers.”