10 die in crowd crush after fireworks festival

At least 10 people were crushed to death tonight when thousands of revellers leaving a fireworks display surged onto a crowded footbridge in western Japan.

Several children were among the dead and nearly 100 others were injured in the crush.

People were packed on the overpass outside the railway station tonight in Akashi, Hyogo Prefecture (state), Hyogo police spokesman Masafumi Oshita said.

The crowd was so thick that people just couldn’t stay on their feet. The 100-metre footbridge is the only route across a busy road from the beach, where the crowd watched the fireworks display, to the station, national broadcaster NHK said.

The 45-minute display drew an estimated 150,000 people, the broadcaster said.

‘‘As soon as the fireworks ended, many people started pushing, and people started getting angry and yelling at each other,’’ a youth told NHK. ‘‘The woman next to me fell, and I landed on top of her. She was having trouble breathing.’’

‘‘I was so scared,’’ the youth said, ‘‘I thought I was going to die.’’

A man told NHK that he couldn’t even keep both feet on the ground because the crowd was so thick. ‘‘I was almost falling too, because I had to stand on one leg,’’ he said.

A woman in a red cotton kimono said the bridge got more packed as the fireworks display neared its end. ‘‘I had trouble breathing,’’ she said. ‘‘There were so many people.’’

Up to 90 people were injured, several seriously, firefighters told the Kyodo news agency. Those not taken to hospitals were treated in emergency tents set up near the overpass, Kyodo said.

The youngest of the dead was two years old, a police official said on condition of anonymity.

Kyodo news agency said the dead included a 71-year-old woman and a seven-year-old boy.

TV broadcasts showed a crowd at the scene, including youths in shorts and young women in cotton kimonos, while the red lights of emergency vehicles flashed in the darkness. Woman fanned themselves in the sultry night air.

The overpass was cordoned off as investigators examined the stairway leading up from the street for evidence. A metal panel on the overpass hung askew.

The accident came at a high point in the Japanese summer festival season, when thousands throng shrines for raucous celebrations or gather under night skies for elaborate fireworks displays.

Akashi is about 630 kilometres southwest of Tokyo.