SEOUL - Partygoers in costumes fleeing in panic, desperate attempts at first aid on the sidewalks, scores of bodies lined up under makeshift shrouds: in Seoul’s lively Itaewon district, a Halloween festival turned to tragedy on Saturday.

About 150 people were killed in a crowd surge, the cause of which is still unclear, in this popular, cosmopolitan district of the South Korean capital, located close to a former United States military base and renowned for its bars and clubs.

Tens of thousands of people – mostly young and many wearing elaborate Halloween costumes – had descended upon the district on Saturday night, for the first major Halloween celebration since most Covid-19 restrictions were lifted.

“My friend said, ‘something terrible is happening outside’,” said Mr Jeon Ga-eul, 30, who was having a drink at a bar at the moment the crowd surge hit.

“I said, ‘what are you talking about?’ And then I went outside to see and there were people doing CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) in the street.”

The district, which was immortalised by the popular 2020 K-drama hit Itaewon Class, is a warren of steeply sloping, twisted alleyways on either side of the main road.

The crowd was exceptionally dense on Saturday night, eyewitnesses told AFP, with Mr Jeon saying that even ahead of the disaster, he had felt unsafe.

“There were so many people just being pushed around and I got caught in the crowd and I couldn’t get out at first too,” he said.

“I felt like an accident was bound to happen.”

Passers-by help

The crowd surge took place in a narrow alley near the Hamilton Hotel in Itaewon.

Faced with a huge number of victims, the first emergency responders were asking passers-by to administer first aid and perform CPR on victims in the streets, just next to the chaos. The bodies of people who had been crushed or trampled to death lay in rows, covered with blankets or makeshift shrouds.

Hundreds of ambulances lined up in front of the Soon Chun Hyang University Hospital, which is near Itaewon and where a large number of the victims were taken.

At the scene, which had been cordoned off by the police and was bathed in red from hundreds of flashing lights, music continued to play from some bars.

Dazed passers-by sat on the sidewalk, checking their phones. Others comforted themselves, hugging each other even as others – seemingly unaware of the scale of the tragedy that had unfolded just next to them – continued to celebrate.

Hours after the disaster, 24-year-old Marwan, a Moroccan who has lived in South Korea for six years, was walking around the neighbourhood still trying to process what had happened.

“Three of my friends died today. I used to hang out with them every weekend in Itaewon and now they’re dead. There were no bodyguards or owners trying to stop the situation.”

Another person who was in the area, 23-year-old Lee Hyun-se, who was dressed as the Joker, said: “I wasn’t at the site of the accident, but I later saw people being carried away (in stretchers) and it was so heartbreaking.”

Police investigators scoured the debris-strewn alleyways.

“It’s always crowded, but nothing like this has ever happened before,” 24-year-old Ju Young Possamai, a bartender in the Itaewon district told AFP.

“I’ve been to a lot of Halloween parties in South Korea,” he said. “I never thought that something like this could happen in South Korea, especially in Itaewon.” AFP, THE KOREA HERALD/ASIA NEWS NETWORK