At least 154 people were killed
Saturday night in a crush of
surging partygoers in Seoul,
South Korea.
This is one of the deadliest
tragedies ever there.
Pictures share on social media
show the crowd jammed into an
alley.
>> Among those killed, 26
foreign nationals including two
U.S. Citizens.
Witnesses say the capital's
nightlife district was crammed
with people just trying to enjoy
the first Halloween weekend
without covid restrictions.
CNN's senior international
correspondent Ivan Watson is
live for us on the scene in
Seoul with what has become a makeshift memorial there, Ivan.
Are you learning any more about
what triggered the surge?
>> Reporter: Just a sheer mass
of humanity.
Many, many young people,
thousands of them that gathered
steps from where I'm standing
right now to celebrate
Halloween, to drink, tricked out
in costumes and it turned into a
nightmare. I'll get out of the way so you
can take look at this very
somber, very sad scene here.
People have been laying flowers
and lighting candles,
handwritten notes to some of the
154 mostly very young victims of
this terrible catastrophe.
I've spoken with a number of the
survivors, people who came out
Saturday night, they heard that
this neighborhood, itaewon, just
down the road from an old U.S.
Military base threw a good party
on the weekend of Halloween and
were initially laughing at the
just massive numbers of people
in the nearby alleyways near
where I'm standing.
And then those jokes about, hey,
I'm not going to be able to
breathe here, started getting
very dark as the reality started
setting in.
Take a listen to what these two
French exchange students told
me.
>> There were, like, so many
people who were pushing us and
we cannot breathe, I told for a
moment.
At some point I had no air and
we were so crushed to other
people that I couldn't breathe
at all, soy just passed out.
>> Unconscious?
>> Yeah, unconscious.
>> Did you know people were
dying near where you were
standing.
>> No, no.
>> We were just there and trying
to save our life.
>> Reporter: The Korean
government has declared a week
of mourning.
Most of the victims were in
their 20s.
The government says five her
high school students, one was a
middle school student.
I'll point you here.
This is a 20-year-old American
exchange student, Stephen blessy
who was here on his junior
semester abroad.
>> Junior year in college.
Just devastating.
Ivan, where does the
investigation go from here?
>> Reporter: Well, the police
have come out, and they say that
they simply didn't have a
guidebook or a manual for a
gathering of this kind without a
single organizer.
They had anticipated more people
here as Korea has come out of
the covid lockdowns and
regulations, they say they
deployed more police officers
than in past years for
Halloween, but that their
mission was to focus on stopping
drug use and sexual abuse, not
crowd control.
There's actually a police
station barely a stone's throw
away from where I am right now.
There are also security cameras
on the streets where this
terrible crowd surge, this
deadly crowd surge took place.
There's definitely going to need
to be a manual written for these
types of situations in the
future.
Everybody you talk to here is
stunned and in shock because
this city has a reputation for safety
that went terribly wrong on Saturday night.
Brianna.
Ivan Watson, thank you for that report from Seoul.