Investigators raid Seoul police over deadly Halloween crowd surge

A woman pays tribute to victims of the incident during Saturday night’s Halloween festivities (Ahn Young-joon/AP)

South Korea’s National Police Agency has raided local police departments in the capital Seoul as it investigates whether official ineptitude contributed to a deadly crowd surge that killed 156 people.

The raids came a day after the national agency acknowledged that Seoul police failed to act for hours despite receiving at least 11 emergency calls from pedestrians warning about a swelling crowd of Halloween revellers getting out of control ahead of the crush on Saturday in a narrow alley near the Hamilton Hotel in the Itaewon district.