Dozens of people have been killed in a stampede at India's Maha Kumbh Mela festival.
Tens of millions of Hindus gathered in north India for the six-week festival, and on the most important day of the festival, went to swim in sacred river waters, under the belief that bathing in three sacred rivers absolves people of sins and brings salvation.
Authorities had deployed additional security, medical personnel and with AI-software-based crowd management technology in response to the expected record 100 million people.
During the swim on Wednesday, witnesses reported a large push forward that caused devotees to fall on each other.
Others said the closure of routes down to the water had the huge, packed crowd at a standstill causing suffocation and collapse.
Two local police sources have reported at least 39 were killed in the crush and senior police officer Vaibhav Krishna told reporters that 90 people were taken to the hospital.
“More bodies are coming in. We have nearly 40 bodies here. We are transferring them out as well and handing [them] over to families one by one,” one of the sources said at the Moti Lal Nehru Medical College hospital.
An official at Prayagraj’s SRN Hospital, where some of the injured were taken, said those who died had either suffered heart attacks or had comorbidities like diabetes.