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145 killed in Indian temple stampede

AFP, Shimla
Thousands of panicked pilgrims stampeded yesterday at a remote mountaintop temple in northern India during celebrations to honour a Hindu goddess, sending dozens of people plummeting to their deaths and trampling scores more. Police said 145 people were killed.
The Press Trust of India news agency said 145 people had died and 50 were injured.
The accident took place at the famed Naina Devi temple, situated about 150 kilometres (90 miles) from state capital Shimla and where tens of thousands of people have been gathering for the festival that began Saturday.
The stampede occurred after a railing at the popular shrine collapsed under the weight of devotees, sending many people falling down a narrow, steep staircase leading to the hilltop temple. A major panic and crush ensued.
The bodies of devotees were piled up on the road leading to the temple, witnesses said
Police said nearly 50,000 worshippers were expected daily during the week-long festival, but many more had turned up on Sunday, leading to a massive rush at the pilgrimage centre in the foothills of the Himalayas.
Many of the deceased were from neighbouring Punjab state and had already been taken to their home state when police arrived at the scene.
Additional police from Punjab had been requested to help at the site, where relief work was hampered by rain.
Television pictures showed that the temple -- where pilgrims offer prayers to the goddess Nanda Devi --was massively overcrowded.
* A lot of people were confined in a small area," said district deputy commissioner CP Verma.
Temple crushes are common during festivities in India, where crowd control management is often rudimentary at best.
Six people died in a similar accident at a popular Hindu festival in July in the eastern state of Orissa, where about a million
people had gathered in Puri town for an annual celebration.
In March, nine people were killed and many more injured at a religious gathering in central India when a railing broke at the temple premises, leading to a stampede among 100,000 devotees.
The Press TYust of India news agency and the private NDTV television channel both quoted local government officials as saying more than 130 people died.
At the Bilhaspur hospital, rescue workers unloaded the dead wrapped in brown blankets, laying out the bodies in rows so that relatives could identify them.
Verma said the stampede may have been sparked by rumors of a landslide, but it was made worse when too many pilgrims tried to squeeze onto the narrow path.
"At the moment our efforts are focused on rescue. Once that is complete we will investigate the cause,” said Anurag Garg, another senior police officer.
Deadly stampedes are a relatively common occurrence at FROM PAGE 16
the summit as an observer, said he believed Gilani was determined to "conquer the problems of extremism and terrorism."
"We welcome the statement he made about looking into the causes and sources of the Kabul bombing" Boucher told reporters, adding that Pakistan’s new government needed more time to tackle terrorism.
"I do remember it’s a new government There are enormous challenges," he told reporters on the sidelines of the eight-member South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) summit in the Sri Lankan capital.
On Saturday the Indian and Pakistan premiers agreed that the bombing of India's embassy in the Afghan capital, plus a string of clashes along the Line of Control dividing the Himalayan region of Kashmir, had "cast a pall" on the four-year-old peace drive, Indian foreign secretary Shiv Shankar Menon said.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who met Gilani at a luxury hotel overlooking the Indian Ocean, "was relatively frank in expressing his views,' said Menon.
But "bothprime ministers saidwe need to overcome these (problems) and move forward," Menon told reporters, adding Gilani had "stressed that across the board in Pakistan, all political parties want improved relations."
The summit is routinely eclipsed by tensions between India and Pakistan, who have fought three wars since the post-colonial partition of the subcontinent
Gilani also met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Sunday, and "the two sides agreed to coordinate their efforts to stop cross border terrorism." a joint statement said.
Foreign ministers of Pakistan and Afghanistan would meet soon "to prepare grounds for a framework for close and constructive engagement between (the) two countries to build confidence and develop a common strategy at the political, military and intelligence levels," the statement added.
Karzai accuses Islamabad of backing Taliban militants, and
Afghan officials have also linked Pakistan's shadowy Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) to the Indian embassy bombing -- a charge Islamabad has denied as" rubbish. ”
At the end of the summit, Singh shook hands with Gilani and Karzai besides other leaders before leaving in a bullet-proof car he brought with him from India despite Sri Lanka saying it was offering "ultimate" security.
Karzai said terrorism was the most "menacing" challenge faced by Saarc. which groups Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan. India. The Maldives, Nepal. Pakistan and Sri Lanka
A draft summit declaration called for collective action to combat "all forms of terrorist violence" that was threatening their "peace, stability and security"
The leaders agreed to implement a regional trade pact - signed in 1995 but never fully implemented - "in letter and in spirit'’ to ensure a free flow of goods and services between the region of 1.5 billion people
Saarc members also noted the urgent need to develop energy and food security, and to look at cutting international telephone call charges within the region to foster closer economic ties.
The summit was held under unprecedented securin’ in insurgency-hit Sri Lanka, which deployed 20,000 additional police and troops to guard delegates.