Fifty-nine people were killed and dozens of revellers were injured on Saturday night during a stampede in Seoul, where thousands of people had gathered in the city’s popular Itaewon neighbourhood to celebrate Halloween.

As many as 81 people were reported to be having “breathing problems”, police officers said. The South Korean national news agency, Yonhap, reported that about 50 people were in cardiac arrest.

President Yoon Suk Yeol ordered his government to dispatch urgent help and medical assistance to the scene after he was informed of “multiple casualties”, his office said in a statement. Seoul’s mayor, Oh Se-hoon, who was visiting the Netherlands, was returning to South Korea, his office said.

Photographs published by domestic media showed citizens, police officers and medical workers performing CPR on people sprawled on the pavement. Live footage on MBC-TV, a local broadcaster, showed firefighters carrying what looked like bodies covered with white sheets on stretchers to ambulances.

New York Times News Service and Reuters

50 killed as heavy rains lash Philippines

Manila: Flash floods and landslides set off by torrential rains left at least 50 people dead, including in a hard-hit southern Philippine province, where as many as 60 villagers are feared missing and buried in a huge mudslide laden with rocks, trees and debris, officials said Saturday.

At least 42 people were swept away by rampaging floodwaters and drowned or were hit by debris-filled mudslides in three towns in Maguindanao province from Thursday night to early Friday, said Naguib Sinarimbo, the interior minister for a five-province Muslim autonomous region governed by former separatist guerrillas.

Eight other people died elsewhere in the country from the onslaught of Tropical Storm Nalgae, which slammed into the eastern province of Camarines Sur early on Saturday, the government’s disaster response agency said.

AP/PTI