Stampede and fire kill hundreds in India

A gas cylinder explodes near a temple in Mandher Devi, 260 km southeast of Bombay. Picture / Reuters

BOMBAY - As many as 300 Hindu pilgrims, including women and children, may have been crushed or burned to death in a stampede and fire near a temple in western India, the district's top official has said.

A fire broke out in roadside stalls when more than 150,000 people were on an annual pilgrimage to the popular Mandher Devi temple, on a hilltop near Wai, about 162 miles southeast of Bombay, witnesses said.

Scores were crushed to death on the steep and narrow hill path leading to the temple and many others were charred, they said.

Reporters saw at least 100 bodies at the site.

"We cannot confirm it, but it appears that 250 to 300 people are dead," Subbarao Patil, district collector for Satara district where the temple is located, told a correspondent for Asia News International television on Tuesday.

"This does not include the people who may have been charred to death in the shops that have been gutted nearby in the fire."

Dishevelled and mangled bodies were lined up and tin-roofed stalls were smouldering near the temple and the adjoining settlement, situated on a craggy hilltop about 4,000 feet (1,220 metres) high, the ANI reporter said.

"There more than a hundred dead bodies lying around and dozens of others have already been sent down to Wai by bus," she told Reuters by phone.

"It is utter mayhem here. The sheds are still smouldering."

WET STEPS

Witnesses said the stampede started around midday after pilgrims slipped on the temple's steep stone steps, which had become wet from coconuts broken as an offering to the local deity Kalubai.

A fire then broke out in shops nearby and gas cylinders exploded, officials said.

The 300-year-old temple is popular among lower caste Hindus who undertake the annual pilgrimage on a full-moon day in January and participate in a 24-hour-long festival that includes ritual animal sacrifices to the goddess.

In 2003, more than 32 people died at a stampede in Nasik, another town in the western Maharashtra state, during the Kumbh Mela, or Grand Pitcher festival.

- REUTERS