South Korea declaring a
national period of mourning
after a deadly crowd surge
killed at least 153 people
who were out
celebrating Halloween
in the capital of Seoul.
With a warning with some of the images,
we're going to share our graphic.
Authorities are still investigating
exactly what
caused this crowd crush,
but emergency officials first began
receiving
reports of people
buried in crowds on Saturday evening.
There were thousands of people out
that night in an area of the city
with very narrow streets.
As you can say, they're packed in alleys.
And witnesses say
people were trapped and panicked
because they couldn't breathe.
With dozens of people
being administered CPR on the sidewalks,
they turned around
and told the crowd,
you can't come this way.
People are dying
Now, police say they
have confirmed the identities of nearly
all of those killed as families attempt
to reunite with loved ones
lost in the chaos.
President Biden
and the first lady, by the way,
have both offered
their deepest condolences to the families
of those impacted by this
horrific tragedy.
Let's take you to Seoul now
and CNN's Will Ripley,
who is on the scene shortly
after this happened.
Will, have officials
gotten any closer to understanding
exactly how all of this unfolded
It seems
as if this may have simply been a case
of so many people
so excited to be out
for the first Halloween
after COVID restrictions.
So three years of restrictions
and people were packing into this area.
We're actually now behind the alleyway
that we showed you just now on video.
And you can see
this is where a lot of people
were receiving CPR
you saw lines of bodies
down in the streets.
And what's really,
really striking to me is
you see that bag there
with a shoe
and, you know,
you see people's Halloween costumes
I remember seeing
one of the bodies
that was rolled
by our live position yesterday
and there was a sheet
covering the stretcher.
But you could see
she had a beautiful, glittery princess
dress on for Halloween.
And anybody who knew her
would have known that that was her
just by seeing the costume
and you think about her
this young this one woman's parents,
her family, her friends.
And it's just really heartbreaking.
97 of those who were killed are women.
56 men out of 153 deaths.
And they come from
not just here in South Korea,
the majority from South Korea,
but really all over the world.
I mean, the list up just updated here
Norway, Australia, Japan, Sri Lanka,
Thailand, Iran,
all of these people, many of them
in their twenties, in their thirties,
out here having a great time
and they never came home.
Know
Halloween horror and heartbreak
in Seoul's popular nightlife district.
Nightmare scenes,
the narrow alleys of each one
lined with lifeless bodies,
many in costume
Frantic first responders
trying to save them.
This is a row of stretchers
that we
initially thought
were waiting
for potential survivors of this incident
at a Halloween party
where thousands of people
were packed into a relatively tight area.
But in fact, we've now realized
that these stretchers are being used to
bring back bodies.
And we have just seen body after body
rolling pass here that you see
most of those hurt
or killed in their late
teens and twenties.
The local fire
chief says young people from South Korea
and beyond.
Witnesses say Taiwan's iconic
Halloween festivities
always draw an international crowd.
This video on Twitter
shows an apparent lack of crowd control,
a sea of bodies pouring into a tiny area.
An ominous warning
telling people to be careful.
Police
and emergency crews rushed to the scene
shortly after 10 p.m.
local Saturday night.
Yonhap News Agency reported
emergency lines
flooded with calls
from people in the packed
area saying they were stuck, suffocating.
Some who fell down
apparently crushed
under a growing pile of people.
Official causes of death not confirmed,
but Yonhap reporting
dozens suffered cardiac arrest.
And I saw the people's like going to
the left side and I actually saw
the person actually get into that
at the opposite side.
So actually, the person in the middle,
they got jammed
and they they have like, you know,
no way to communicate.
And they like you know,
they cannot breathe.
The fire
chief calls this a presumed stampede.
The investigation is ongoing.
Social media video shows
emergency crews struggling,
pulling
injured and unconscious victims
from the narrow alleyways
still jammed with hundreds,
if not thousands of people
South Korea's president in Tokyo
holding an emergency cabinet meeting.
The tragic incident
now being treated as a national disaster.
Authorities say hospital beds and morgues
filling up fast.
President Yoon
making rapid identification of victims
a top priority.
Anxious
families and friends
desperately waiting for word,
waiting for loved ones
who left for a night of Halloween fun
and haven't come home
as of about an hour ago.
There were
4100 missing persons cases filed.
There are about 100,000 people out here.
Last night, tonight was actually supposed
to be an even bigger night.
This is one of the Ali
the alley, actually, right next door,
just down the block
from where this happened.
This was supposed to be packed tonight.
And you can see that
it's completely
shut down
this space maybe six and a half
feet across. Guys.
Can you imagine
being stuck in the middle here
with literally thousands of people
in this small area
packing and pushing you
It's hard to wrap your mind around
how terrifying
that must have been for
those people
who were essentially crushed to death
or for those who slipped and fell
and had people piling up on top of them.
Some people so desperate,
you know, they were trying to climb up
these walls here
just jumping in
and grabbing for anything
they could to get up above
the crowd of people.
There's a lot of
questions that need to be answered
here in South Korea.
Why were so many people
allowed to pack into a narrow space
like this? Where was the crowd control?
Some of the images
that we've been showing you,
they were from an hour, 2 hours
before this deadly incident.
Was there
nobody sounding the alarm saying,
hey, too many people,
let's clear them out
before something horrible happens?
I mean, these are the
really tough questions
that they're having to ask here.
But tonight, as you see it's all about,
well, most people who were here
last night
want nothing to do with this place.
Now it's empty.
Aside from a handful of reporters
and the police blocking off the area,
And, of course, those shoes
and the
pieces of people's Halloween costumes
just sitting in trash bags guarantee you
a lot of the pieces of costumes,
they're come from people
who who didn't make it out alive
yesterday.
Just heartbreaking details
to think about,
you know,
these costumes
and how recognizable
some of the victims may have been Will.
And John,
just to give it some context,
I mean,
that's an eerie silence that we're seeing
and not hearing.
Right,
because each one,
as some of you may know,
I've been there before.
You know, it's a popular entertainment
night district, a place that, you know,
a lot of foreigners like to frequent.
It's very popular with U.S.
soldiers, a big expat community.
And just just a quick question.
Were the crowds honest?
I mean, I guess
such large crowds unexpected.
Was there a parade
or what was exactly supposed to
take place last night? There?
Well, there were a lot
of different parties thrown in,
I should point out.
I mean, I've been to Seoul
dozens of times
for work covering North Korea,
just, you know, covering South Korea.
Over the years.
It's been a few years
since I've been here.
And I can't count how many nights
I have been along this exact
same street with friends.
I celebrated my birthday
at that restaurant right there.
This is the place that you go
if you want to have
some drinks, have have a meal.
So this feels
it feels very personal
for anybody that has
that has come to Seoul
and come to Itaewon,
which is a very, very popular,
iconic place, especially on Halloween.
Halloween is always
one of their biggest nights
I think people knew that
this night was going to be huge.
I mean, there were live streams.
People were saying,
this is going to be the most wild
Halloween party in Asia, you know,
because people were so excited
to just come back out
and not have to wear a mask on Halloween
over three years.
They had to wear a mask on Halloween,
and they and there were limits on
crowd size.
That was not the case this year.
And so.
Well, you know, in terms of
why people died,
was was the fact
that alcohol was consumed a factor
in all of these cardiac arrest cases?
Some doctors are saying that
that might be the case.
It's still too early to,
you know, to
to figure that out,
because with such a high volume of bodies
that still some of them unidentified,
you know, still,
you know, families
waiting to be notified,
it's just going to take time.