The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
At least 44 dead and dozens injured after stampede at religious festival
A stampede at a religious festival attended by tens of thousands of ultraorthodox Jews in Israel has killed at least 44 people and injured about 150, medical officials said.
One of the country’s deadliest civilian disasters began when large numbers of people thronged a narrow tunnel-like passage during the event, according to witnesses.
People began falling on top of each other near the end of the walkway as they descended slippery metal stairs.
Avraham Leibe told Israeli public broadcaster Kan that a crush of people trying to descend the mountain caused “general bedlam” on a slippery metal slope followed by stairs. “Nobody managed to halt,” he said from a hospital bed. “I saw one after the other fall.”
Video footage showed large numbers of people, most of them black-clad ultra-orthodox men,
squeezed in the tunnel. The Haaretz daily quoted witnesses as saying police barricades prevented people from exiting quickly.
The stampede occurred during celebrations of Lag Baomer at Mount Meron, the first mass religious gathering to be held legally since Israel lifted nearly all restrictions related to the coronavirus pandemic.
The country has seen virus cases plummet since launching one of the world’s most successful vaccination campaigns late last year.
Lag Baomer draws tens of thousands of people each year to Mount Meron in the north of the country to honour Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, a second century mystic who is buried there.