A crush at the Lag BaOmer religious festival at Mt. Meron in Israel left at least 45 dead and 150 more injured Friday morning, caused by participants crowding onto a slippery staircase in a packed corridor. NPR:
Witnesses said people were asphyxiated or trampled in the tightly packed corridor. The stampede occurred in the men's section of the gender-segregated festival, Reuters reported, quoting medics, who said that casualties included children. … Despite warnings from Israeli health officials, local media estimated the crowd at this year's festival at around 100,000 people. Another witness told Haaretz newspaper, "It happened in a split second; people just fell, trampling each other. It was a disaster."
Here's footage of the coridoor from earlier on. No-one seems to be getting hurt in the footage but it's clear that things are getting out of hand.
