Shanghai stampede: kills 35 on New Year Eve

During New Year’s Eve celebrations in Shanghai, a stampede killed at least 35 people. Authorities said, possibly caused by people rushing to pick up fake money thrown from a building overlooking the city’s famous Bund waterfront district.

The Shanghai government said large crowds started to stampede in Chen Yi Square on the Bund just before midnight, with authorities working to rescue and aid the wounded.The trigger for the stampede has still to be confirmed, but state media and witnesses said the incident was at least partly caused when people tried picking up fake money.

A man who brought one of the 48 injured to a local hospital for treatment said fake money had been thrown down from a bar above the street as part of the New Year’s Eve celebrations. People rushed to pick up the money, triggering the stampede, said the man, who gave his family name as Wu.

The glass doors to the bar, whose name appeared on the fake bills, was locked at midday on Thursday, though signs of the previous night’s party could be seen with debris strewn on the floor. People inside the bar did not answer the door when a Reuters reporter knocked.

State radio said many of the dead and injured were students, with 25 of the dead women. Some were young children.

President Xi Jinping has asked the Shanghai government to get to the bottom of the incident as soon as possible, and ordered governments across the country to ensure a similar disaster could not happen again, state television said. The Shanghai government said on its official microblog that an inquiry had begun, and that all other New Year events had been canceled.

Photographs on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, showed densely packed crowds of revelers along the Bund where buildings from Shanghai’s pre-communist heyday face the Huangpu River and house upscale restaurants, bars, shops and hotels.

Authorities had shown some concern about crowd control in the days leading up to New Year’s Eve. They recently canceled an annual 3D laser show on the Bund that last year attracted as many as 300,000 people.

Source: Reuters