Despite the 137 police officers gathered in the area, no special measures related to the control of people were established in the alley where the tragedy occurred.
Euskaraz irakurri: Hego Koreako Poliziak onartu du Seulgo tragedian aurreikuspen akatsa egon zela
The South Korean Police admitted this Monday that they had not foreseen that the halloween festivities on Saturday night in the Itaewon neighborhood in Seoul could cause a human avalanche that has left at least 154 people dead, 26 of whom are foreigners. The victims were young, mostly in their teens and twenties.
“A large number of people were expected to gather there. But we did not expect large-scale casualties due to this event,” said Hong Ki-hyun, head of the Public Order Management Office of the South Korean Police. .
The Police had previously reported that they expected a large concentration of some 100,000 people at the party. However, according to Hong, the number of people gathered was similar to that of other years or a little higher, although he could not confirm if the rate at which they began to gather was higher than in previous years. Likewise, she has indicated that the agents in the area “did not detect a sudden increase in the crowd.”
Despite the 137 police officers gathered in the area, no special measures related to the control of people were established in the alley where the tragedy occurred.
The accident took place when a crowd gathered on a street about four meters wide overnight on Saturday, downhill, next to the Hamilton Hotel in downtown Itaewon. According to witnesses, the crowd began to gather in the area during the day and by nightfall tens of thousands of people filled the narrow streets of the neighborhood.
In the aftermath of the avalanche, hundreds of people were trapped, some for over an hour, and as a result many, most of them women in their twenties, suffocated to death. there are others 33 people seriously injured.
After the drama experienced, South Korea has declared national mourning for a week for the worst tragedy the country has experienced since the 2014 sinking of the Sewol ferry, where more than 300 people, most of them high school students, lost their lives.
Source: Eitb
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