Stampede, Fire Kill Hundreds Near Indian Temple

[seriousstan]

BOMBAY (Reuters) - 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 Tuesday, the district's top official 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 160 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
http://reuters.myway.com/article/20050125/2005-01-25T142855Z_01_SP36298_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-INDIA-STAMPEDE-DC.html