PRAYAGRAJ, Jan 29: A stampede at the world's largest religious gathering in India killed at least 15 people with many more injured, a doctor at the Maha Kumbh Mela festival in Prayagraj told AFP.
Deadly crowd crushes are a notorious feature of Indian religious festivals and the Maha Kumbh Mela, with its unfathomable throngs of devotees, already had a grim track record of deadly crowd crushes before the latest incident overnight.
The six-week festival is the single biggest milestone on the Hindu religious calendar, and millions of people were expected to be present for a sacred day of ritual bathing at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers.
"At least 15 people have died so far. Others are being treated," said the doctor in Prayagraj city, speaking on condition of anonymity as they were not authorised to talk to the media.
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Rescue teams were seen working with pilgrims to carry victims away from the site of the accident.
Local government official Akanksha Rana told the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency that the stampede began after crowd control barriers "broke".
Pilgrim Malti Pandey, 42, told AFP that he was on his way to bathe in the river along a barricaded walking route when the stampede began.
"Suddenly a crowd started pushing and many people were crushed," he said.
The Maha Kumbh Mela is rooted in Hindu mythology, a battle between deities and demons for control of a pitcher containing the nectar of immortality.
Organisers have likened the scale of this year's festival to that of a temporary country, forecasting up to 400 million pilgrims to visit before the final day on 26 February.
Mindful of the risk of deadly crowd accidents, police this year installed hundreds of cameras at the festival site and on roads leading to the sprawling encampment, mounted on poles and a fleet of overhead drones.
The surveillance network is fed into a sophisticated command and control centre that is meant to alert staff if sections of the crowd get so concentrated that they pose a safety threat.
More than 400 people died after being trampled or drowned at the Maha Kumbh Mela on a single day of the festival in 1954, one of the largest tolls in a crowd-related disaster globally.
Another 36 people were crushed to death in 2013, the last time the festival was staged in the northern city of Prayagraj.
