Crowding in Seoul: Testimonies describing the panic at the Halloween tragedy in South Korea

reported More than 150 people died More than 80 people were injured in the accident on Saturday night.

Images circulating show people overcrowded.

Some managed to get out safely, but bystanders were helping paramedics give CPR to the injured and there was a long line of victims in body bags on the sidewalk.

A steep sloping alley became a death trap as the crowd seemed to surge forward and those in front fell and were trampled by those behind.

Videos posted on Twitter show people being pulled out of the packed crowd in an attempt to rescue them.

“A short man like me couldn’t even breathesaid a witness quoted by the AFP news agency.

He said he survived because he was on the side of the alley, but “the people in the middle suffered the most.”

Rafael Rasheed said that “nobody understood what was going on” and that some police were “standing on top of their squad cars and trying hard to get people to leave the area as soon as possible”.

Doctor Lee Beom-suk told local broadcaster YTN that he tried to revive some of the victims with CPR, but “The number quickly explodedThere are more than just first responders on the scene.”

“Many passers-by came to help us with CPR.”

“The faces of many of the victims were pale,” he said.

“I couldn’t take their pulse or breathing and many of them had nosebleeds.”

Park Jung-hoon, 21, told Reuters news agency that the situation “Totally out of control“.

And Moon Joo-young, 21, noted, “There were too many people.”

“I know the police and rescue workers are working hard, but I would say there is a lack of preparation.”

An Itaewon resident, Lee Su-mi, 53, told Reuters that “those young people who were called the ‘Covid generation’ were finally able to celebrate Halloween as their first festival.”

So no one could have predicted that the festival would turn out to be a disaster.

Fan Wang, BBC News, Singapore

Ana, a 24-year-old Spaniard, was asked to help revive victims using CPR, even though she had never done so before.

She and her German friend Melissa, 19, were at a bar next door to the crowded area.

As they tried to leave around 11:00 p.m. local time (2:00 a.m. GMT), they saw ambulances and police scrambling to evacuate the dead and injured.

“There were a lot of people who needed laymen to do CPR and then everyone started helping. We had two friends who knew how to do CPR and they came to help,” Ana told the BBC.

“They probably came back three minutes later or so She is crying And with shock Because they tried to save five or six people, but they all died by their own hands,” says the Spaniard.

That’s when he went outside to help the two girls. Not knowing how to perform CPR, he followed the instructions of others.

“They were telling me how to hold the head and open the mouth. I tried to help, but they were both dead, and I have to say everyone they brought in to do CPR. Most of them don’t breatheASo they couldn’t do anything. We couldn’t do anything, that was the main shock,” says Ana.

BBC Thai Service

Jesse Jasica was at a bar on the corner of the alley where the tragedy happened.

He heard the screams and turned around to see what was going on outside and opened the bottle of champagne.

“People have already fallen,” he said in a video posted on Facebook, “and they fell like dominoes.”

According to Jasika, people started struggling to their feet and security personnel tried to prevent them from entering the bar as they tried to escape being crushed.

“I was locked up for a while because the guards wouldn’t let me out. I was scared when I saw people spitting blood and doing CPR,” he said.

When he made it and walked down the next alley, he says he was surprised to find “tourists still dancing, they’re still taking photos.”

“It was shocking because a lot of people hadn’t seen the news and they still didn’t know what was going on.”

Jean Mackenzie is the BBC’s correspondent in Seoul

“People started pushing from behind and it was like a wave, you couldn’t do anything,” Nuhil Ahmed told the BBC on Sunday.

“I couldn’t sleep last night. I still see people dying in front of me“.

Ahmad, 32, works in the tech industry, lives in Seoul and has attended the Halloween party for the past five years.

He said there were more police in the area last year, but this year, unlike what he had seen before, “there was no crowd control.”

Ahmed was with his friends when they decided to enter the alley, but they got stuck in the crowd.

“Even if you stand still, someone pushes you forward and someone behind. It happened a few times. I could tell something was wrong. I was afraid something was going to happen.”

He fell, but managed to make it to the steps next to the alley. “A woman with angel wings beckoned me I managed to climb a higher step“, he explained.

“There were people choking, screaming, squeezing, falling, too many people.”

“I was on the steps watching everything happen. They didn’t know what to do and we couldn’t do anything.”

He felt helpless watching people take what was their last breath.

He was worried about his friends and tried to call them, but they did not answer. After a few hours, he discovered that they had managed to escape the crowd.

He didn’t realize what had happened until the crowd dispersed and the ambulance arrived. “They started pulling out the bodies from below“, said.

*With information from reporters Lawrence Peter, Wan Jung Bae and Hosu Lee.

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