Itaewon crowd crush death toll now 154, including 26 foreigners

• Published date: 31 October 2022
• Publication title: Philippines News agency

The death toll from the Halloween crowd crush in Seoul has risen to 154, including 26 foreigners, officials said Monday, as the country mourned the deadliest tragedy in years and tried to cope with the aftermath.

The death toll could rise further, as 33 others remain in serious condition, according to officials at the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters. A total of 116 others sustained minor injuries, they said.

All but one of the fatalities have been identified, officials said.

The 26 foreign victims include five from Iran, four each from China and Russia, two from the United States, two from Japan, and one each from France, Australia, Norway, Austria, Vietnam, Thailand, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Sri Lanka, officials said.

Among those killed were one middle schooler and five high school students, all from Seoul, the education ministry said. Five other middle or high school students have been injured, and two of them were being treated at hospitals, it said.

The tragedy happened Saturday night when a massive crowd of Halloween partygoers packed a narrow 3.2-meter-wide alley in Seoul's entertainment district of Itaewon. Some of them began to fall over, causing others to fall down like "dominoes" and pile up on one another.

It marked the deadliest crowd crush in South Korea's history and the worst disaster the country has seen since 2014, when the ferry Sewol sank in waters off the south coast and killed 304 people, mostly high school students.

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