A security guard stood at either end of a 145-year-old footbridge in Morbi on Sunday evening, blowing whistles and repeatedly asking surging crowds to get off the structure spanning the murky Machchu river, witnesses said.

One of the six people who saw the bridge collapse and gave an account of its final moments to Reuters said he and his colleagues also shouted from the shore to warn of the danger.

A single private security guard was present at each end of the bridge but they struggled to control the surge of sightseers as evening fell, four other witnesses and a survivor said. The witnesses did not know whether the security guards had survived.

At least 135 people were killed when the structure, built in 1877, gave way, sending victims plunging into the waters below.

Police estimate that around 200 people were on the bridge. Officials said about 400 tickets had been sold, although not necessarily to be on the bridge at the same time.

“We called out to people to tell them that they should leave because we could see there was a lot of crowding,” Ajay Kumar told Reuters, saying he and his colleagues were on the eastern riverbank watching the crowd build.

“Then the bridge collapsed in front of our eyes,” the 32-year-old construction worker said.

He said women and children were among those who drowned, adding that he heard them wailing and screaming.

In the hours before the accident, several hundred people gathered on and around the 233-metre bridge that reopened last week after months of renovation work.

“‘Please listen to us, don’t shake the bridge, don’t crowd, keep moving,’ the guards were saying, but people were not listening,” said Pankaj Kumar, another construction worker who was on the riverside.

Kumar’s account was echoed by three other witnesses and by Mahesh Bhai Chavda, a survivor who said he entered the bridge with his friends minutes before the collapse, via one of the ticket booths at either end of the bridge.

“We saw security guys blowing their whistles at people asking them to not crowd and keep moving,” said Chavda, 18.

The police have so far arrested nine persons on charges of culpable homicide not amounting to murder. Those arrested include three security guards. Reuters could not confirm whether the two guards who witnesses reported seeing at the bridge were among the three arrested.

“The incident happened due to lack of crowd regulation and management,” senior police officer Ashok Kumar Yadav, who is leading the investigation, said.

The chaotic scenes continued at Morbi’s main government hospital.

Hundreds of people gathered there, desperate to find out about their loved ones, and bodies lay on stretchers and on beds inside wards, volunteer helper Bhaskar Wala said.

A staff member, who asked not to be named, said there was little space to move around because of the crowding and it was hard to identify the living from the dead.

“People were sharing photographs of their family members with us,” said Wala, 33.“I helped identify eight members of one family all of whom died.”