35 killed in New Year’s Eve stampede in Shanghai

Around 35 people were killed during a stampede in Shanghai on Wednesday, reportedly after fake money was thrown from a building into a large crowd of New Year’s celebrators about half an hour before midnight. 

The Shanghai government said that a further 48 people were injured during the stampede – 14 seriously –in the historic Bund area, making it one of the worst disasters to have hit a major Chinese city in recent years,

Chinese state radio said that many of the dead and injured were students, with 25 of the dead women. Young children were also reportedly killed. . 

A man who helped bring one of the 43 injured to a local hospital for treatment said that fake money had been thrown down from a bar above the street as a new year’s celebration. He added that people rushed to pick up the money, triggering the stampede.

Cui Tingting, 27, said that she had picked up some of the bank notes but had discarded after realising that they were fake.

“It’s too cruel. People in front of us had already fallen to the floor, and others were stepping all over them,” Tingting said.

 “Six hours have passed, but we still don’t have any information,” she added.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has instructed the Shanghai government to get to the bottom of the incident as soon as possible, and ordered other Chinese governments to ensure that similar disasters are prevented from happening again, state television said. 

On its official microblog, the Shanghai government said that an inquiry had begun.

CCTV America posted a video of Shanghai streets following the stampede, showing piles of discarded shoes amid the debris. China’s state-run Xinhua news agency shared a photo showing at least one person doing chest compressions on a shirtless man while several other people lay on the ground nearby, amid debris.

The annual New Year’s Eve countdown on the Bund, around which Wednesday’s stampede occurred, usually attracts around 300,000 people. Last week, the Shanghai Daily reported that these celebrations had been cancelled, apparently because of crowd control issues. The report added that a “toned-down” version of the event, closed to the public, would be held instead.

While most large gatherings in China are carefully controlled by authorities, Wednesday’s incident was not the first time that the country has witnessed deaths caused by overcrowding. Last year, 14 people were killed and a further 10 injured in a stampede that broke out while food was being distributed at a mosque in China’s Ningxia region. Also last year, six students were killed in a stampede at a primary school in Kunming after the accidental blocking of a stairway corridor.