Deadly stampede at India cricket celebrations
India media reported as many as 11 people had been crushed to death, but Karnataka state's Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar said he was not able to immediately confirm the exact number who had been killed.
"The tragedy and death have brought deep pain and shock", Shivakumar said in a statement. "My condolences to the deceased. My condolences to their family."
An AFP photographer saw vast crowds as a sea of people crammed the streets and police waved sticks.
Shivakumar said "hundreds of thousands of people" had flocked onto the streets.
"I have spoken to the police commissioner and everyone, I will also go to the hospital later -- I do not want to disturb the doctors who are taking care of the patients", he told reporters.
"The exact number cannot be told now. We appeal to the people to remain calm."
Broadcasters showed police rushing away from crowds carrying young children in their arms, who had seemingly fainted.
One unattended young man was sitting in an ambulance struggling to breathe.
India's NDTV broadcaster said at least 11 people were killed, while The Times of India newspaper reported seven dead.
"This is not a controllable crowd," Shivakumar said, speaking to reporters. "The police were finding it very difficult."
"I apologise to the people of Karnataka and Bengaluru," he said. "We wanted to take a procession, but the crowd was very uncontrollable... the crowd was so much."
'Heartfelt condolences
Cricket fans had come out to celebrate and welcome home their heroes, Royal Challengers Bengaluru, after they beat Punjab Kings in a roller-coaster Indian Premier League cricket final on Tuesday night.
Organisers pressed ahead with the ceremony, with the team's social media account posting a video of cheering crowds as the bus full of the players -- including batting legend Virat Kohli -- waved back.
"This welcome is what pure love looks like", the club's social media posted on X.
But IPL chairman Arun Dhumal, speaking to NDTV, said organisers in the stadium had not been told about the stampede.
"At the time of the celebrations inside the stadium officials there did not know what had happened... I would like to send my heartfelt condolences", Dhumal said.
Shivakumar said cricket organisers had "shortened the programme".
"This is a very sad incident," Rajeev Shukla, vice president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), the national governing body, told India Today news outlet.
Deadly crowd incidents are a frequent occurrence at Indian mass events such as religious festivals due to poor crowd management and safety lapses.
In July last year, 121 people were killed in northern Uttar Pradesh state during a Hindu religious gathering.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
France 24
5 hours ago
- France 24
'No Eid' for West Bank Palestinians who lost sons in Israeli raids
The Israeli army has conducted a months-long operation in the camp which has forced Ghazzawi, along with thousands of other residents, from her home. For Ghazzawi, the few precious minutes she spent at her sons' graves still felt like a small victory. "On the last Eid (Eid al-Fitr, celebrating the end of Ramadan in March), they raided us. They even shot at us. But this Eid, there was no shooting, just that they kicked us out of the cemetery twice", the 48-year-old told AFP. "We were able to visit our land, clean up around the graves, and pour rosewater and cologne on them", she added. Eid al-Adha, which begins on Friday, is one of the biggest holidays in the Muslim calendar. According to Muslim tradition, it commemorates the sacrifice Ibrahim (known to Christians and Jews as Abraham) was about to make by killing his son, before the angel Gabriel intervened and offered him a sheep to sacrifice instead. As part of the celebrations, families traditionally visit the graves of their loved ones. In the Jenin camp cemetery, women and men had brought flowers for their deceased relatives, and many sat on the side of their loved ones' graves as they remembered the dead, clearing away weeds and dust. An armoured car arrived at the site shortly after, unloading soldiers to clear the cemetery of its mourners who walked away solemnly without protest. Ghazzawi's two sons, Mohammad and Basel, were killed in January 2024 in a Jenin hospital by undercover Israeli troops. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group claimed the two brothers as its fighters after their deaths. Like Ghazzawi, many in Jenin mourned sons killed during one of the numerous Israeli operations that have targeted the city, a known bastion of Palestinian armed groups fighting Israel. -'There is no Eid'- In the current months-long military operation in the north of the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, Israeli forces looking for militants have cleared three refugee camps and deployed tanks in Jenin. Mohammad Abu Hjab, 51, went to the cemetery on the other side of the city to visit the grave of his son, killed in January by an Israeli strike that also killed five other people. "There is no Eid. I lost my son -- how can it be Eid for me?" he asked as he stood by the six small gravestones of the dead young men. The Israeli military did not offer details at the time but said it had carried out "an attack in the Jenin area". "There's no accountability, no oversight", lamented Abu Hjab. "One of the victims (of the strike) was just a kid, born in 2008 -— so he was only 16 years old." "I still have three other children. I live 24 hours a day with no peace of mind", he added, referring to the army's continued presence in Jenin. All around him, families sat or stood around graves at Jenin's eastern neighbourhood cemetery, which they visited after the early morning Eid prayer at the city's nearby Great Mosque. The mosque's imam led a prayer at the cemetery for those killed in Gaza and for the community's dead, particularly those killed by the Israeli army. Hamam al-Sadi, 31, told AFP he has visited the cemetery at every religious holiday since his brother was killed in a strike, to "just sit with him." -'Our only hope'- Several graves marked "martyr" -- a term broadly applied to Palestinian civilians and militants killed by Israel -- were decorated with photos of young men holding weapons. Mohammad Hazhouzi, 61, lost a son during a military raid in November 2024. He has also been unemployed since Israel stopped giving work permits to West Bank residents after the Gaza war erupted. Despite the army's continued presence in Jenin, Hazhouzi harboured hope. "They've been there for months. But every occupation eventually comes to an end, no matter how long it lasts". "God willing, we will achieve our goal of establishing our Palestinian state. That's our only hope," he said. "Be optimistic, and good things will come".
France 24
5 hours ago
- France 24
Greek artist warns of fanaticism after art vandalised
"This violence is increasingly present in Europe and the United States, where ideas of purity, race or faith fuel nationalism," artist Christophoros Katsadiotis told AFP in an interview on May 29. On March 10, four of Katsadiotis's artworks at Greece's National Gallery were thrown to the ground by two members of extreme-right Orthodox Christian party Niki -- one of them a party lawmaker -- who viewed them as "blasphemous". Two months later, about 30 masked individuals attempted to assault him before an event in Thessaloniki, resulting in the 53-year-old engraver being put under police protection during public appearances. Katsadiotis said the vandalisation incident at the National Gallery was "an attack on democracy... (and) our civilisation". "If I need police protection, then freedom of expression no longer exists. It's a form of censorship," he told AFP on the sidelines of his new exhibition in Athens. The art in question -- four engravings depicting Saint Christopher with a dog's head -- was part of a collective exhibition titled "The Allure of the Bizarre". The two perpetrators, who smashed the glass protecting the engravings, were detained by police but later released. Niki later expelled the lawmaker involved, Nikolaos Papadopoulos, from the party and the National Gallery has sued him. Outcry Katsadiotis is also planning to take legal action. "I was surprised and upset. It was the first time this had happened to me," he said. The incident at the National Gallery sparked an outcry and was condemned by the culture ministry. But the Orthodox Church, which holds broad influence over politics and society in Greece, has publicly criticised parts of the exhibition involving Katsadiotis, who spends his time between Athens and Paris. The Greek Church's governing body, the Holy Synod, voiced "regret" over "the content of certain works in this exhibition" and said it would "take action with the Greek government", without providing further details. Katsadiotis is currently presenting a solo exhibition, including engravings and collages, at the Benaki Museum in Athens. Security was reinforced around the building during the opening last week and police stationed three vehicles outside the entrance, he said. Papadopoulos has continued to publicly condemn the artist's works as "a brutal insult" to sacred Orthodox icons. At the National Gallery, Katsadiotis's engravings are now protected by a transparent panel and an alarm is triggered if visitors get too close. 'Dangerous for the public' The museum, which houses masterpieces of modern Greek and European art, has also increased protection overall due to "ongoing threats against the exhibited works and its staff". "Initially, the idea was to leave the damaged works on the ground to illustrate... the violence," Katsadiotis said. "(But) far-right sympathisers came to trample on them, which was dangerous for the public." Niki, known for its nationalistic and homophobic rhetoric, has 10 MPs in the 300-seat Greek parliament. This is not the first time it has sought to influence art policy. In late 2023, the conservative government took down the work "Flag" by US-Greek artist Georgia Lale from the Greek consulate in New York following a complaint from the ultra-conservative party. The artist had depicted a Greek flag with pink and red stripes instead of its official blue and white colours, to denounce feminicides in Greece. "This decision left the field open for Niki to continue its attacks," said Katsadiotis. He said there was a rise in militant vandalism and warned that "fanaticism" could spiral out of control, offering the example of the fatal attacks in Paris in 2015 after satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo republished caricatures of the prophet Mohammed from the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.
France 24
8 hours ago
- France 24
Slain UK journalist's book on saving the Amazon published
"I think of him every day," his widow, Alessandra Sampaio, told AFP of her husband, who was shot dead in the Amazon on June 5, 2022 along with Indigenous-rights activist Bruno Pereira. She was in London for the global launch of "How to Save the Amazon", which Phillips, a freelancer for The Guardian and the Washington Post, was researching when he was killed. The double murders triggered an international outcry and drew attention to the lawlessness fuelling the destruction of the world's biggest rainforest. Brazilian federal police have concluded the men were killed because of Pereira's monitoring of poaching and other illegal activities in a remote reach of the Amazon. Three years to the day after the murders, a prosecutor from Amazonas state indicted the suspected mastermind, the state prosecutor's office said in a statement Thursday. So far, several suspects have been charged in the killings. Phillips, who had taken a break from journalism to write his book, was seeking to raise the alarm about the environmental damage and illegal activities plaguing the region. "He died trying to show the world the importance of the Amazon," said Sampaio. Pereira was a former senior official with Brazil's Indigenous affairs agency, and disappeared along with Phillips as they travelled through a remote Indigenous reserve, close to the borders of Colombia and Peru. Their hacked-up bodies were found and identified days later, after an alleged accomplice confessed to burying them. Phillips, 57, was shot in the chest, while Pereira, 41, sustained three gunshot wounds, one of them to the head. They were killed in the northwestern Javari Valley, where drug traffickers, illegal fishermen and hunters, and gold miners operate. "It was his second-to-last trip. One more was left, and he would have finished the book," said Sampaio, adding Phillips had already written the first four chapters. 'Dom's book' After his death, his widow spent months collecting his extensive writings, journals and reams of notes. "He had two or three notebooks from each trip, with dates, places, explaining everything," she said. But she confessed that at times she had to stop as she got "too emotional". Each new chapter has been written by a group of six journalists and writers: Britons Jonathan Watts and Tom Phillips; Americans Andrew Fishman, Stuart Grudgings, and Jon Lee Anderson; and Brazilian Eliane Brum. The book is "dedicated to everyone fighting to protect the rainforest". They all travelled to the region, and interviewed new people following Phillips's trail in a bid to faithfully complete his manuscript. The afterword has been written by Beto Marubo, a leader of the Indigenous Marubo people, with Amazonian activist and writer Helena Palmquist. Sampaio, who lives in Brazil's northeastern Salvador da Bahia region, paid tribute to the "loyal friends" who helped complete the book, which she says is also a tribute to activist Pereira. "There's no way to separate Dom and Bruno. They're there together. It's a message for everyone to understand the importance of the Amazon and its people," she said. Watts, global environment writer with The Guardian, said: "It's more than a tribute to Dom, it is Dom's book." "In this process, I'm always imagining what would Dom think, but it's my imagination," he added. "I'm sad that Dom is not here to see it, but I'm very happy that we are here." The murders threw a spotlight on a long-threatened corner of the planet, and stoked criticism of the policies of Brazil's former president Jair Bolsonaro, accused of encouraging the plundering of the rainforest. The book, launched simultaneously in Britain, Brazil and the United States, ends with a plea from Marubo for more people like Phillips and Pereira, who he says wanted to "truly help" save the Amazon.
