Hundreds Die Annually In Human Stampedes

Twenty nine human stampedes have killed approximately 3330 people and injured thousands of others since April 2001. Human stampedes occur more often than most people realize.

The victims are usually killed from compressive asphyxiation (crowd crush), created from horizontal pushing and vertical stacking, instead of trampling. They occur most frequently during musical events, religious pilgrimages, or professional sporting.

Over 8 teenage students were killed and many others injured in the most recent stampede, at a vastly overcrowded school in China.

Approximately 378 people died along with 755 injured in a stampede, at the yearly three-day Water Festival, the chief holiday in Cambodia, which symbolizes the end of the rainy season. Over 2 million people from all over the country, had come to the capital Phnom Penh, to join the celebrations.

It was first said that someone was injured by electricity in the centre of the crowd. Another survivor reported he heard a police siren just before the panic erupted. Others reported that around ten people fell down unconscious in the centre of the crowd, creating panic, which then evolved into a stampede.

As the panic developed, people attempted to shove their way across a narrow bridge off the island where a concert was in progress.

Numerous people fell over the side of the bridge into the water.
Two Singaporean businessmen, who controlled a sound-and-light show for the festival, reported that the authorities had sealed off another bridge off Diamond Island, making tens thousands people use a single span to enter and leave the island.

The reports indicate that firefighters sprayed the crowd, actually trying to calm people down. It was also reported that it was around 1½ hours before police and ambulances arrived at the scene. Local hospitals are barely able to handle day to day medical needs, let alone an emergency of this size.

The dead and injured were still being taken away, hours after the chaotic scenes. It is said that the victims were mainly women.
The yearly Muslim Hajj in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, attended by millions of pilgrims, has been the scene of numerous stampedes through the years.

Identified as 'temple crushes', stampedes occur regularly during Hindu religious holidays in India. These are frequently created through railings giving way, as pilgrims climb steep hills to reach a temple.

In 2005 over 1000 people died following a stampede on the Al-Aaimmah Bridge, which crosses the Tigris River in Baghdad, Iraq. A teenager died as he rescued people from the water.

During World War II the worst recorded stamped in human history occurred, when people stampeded an air raid shelter during a Japanese bombing attack. Approximately 4000 people were killed in the stampede.