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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
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temples in India, where large crowds sometimes hundreds of thousands of people congregate in small areas lacking the facilities to control such big gatherings.
The pilgrims had come to the temple to celebrate Shravan Navratras, a nine-day festival that commemorates the Hindu Goddess Shakrti, or Divine Mother.
Sunday was the second day of the festival and authorities sought to reassure other pilgrims. "There is no need to panic, everything is normalized now," Verma said