36 dead in stampede at Hindu festival in India

         
Anxious relatives were searching for missing family members Monday in a northern India city that is home to one of the world's largest religious gatherings, unsure if their loved ones were caught in a stampede that killed 36 people or had simply gotten lost among the tens of millions of pilgrims.                     

People thronged to the main hospital in Allahabad to see if their relatives were among 36 dead and 30 people injured in Sunday evening's stampede at the city's train station. Tens of thousands of people were in the station waiting to board a train when railway officials announced a last-minute change in the platform, triggering the chaos.                     

An estimated 30 million Hindus took a dip Sunday at the Sangam the confluence of the Ganges, the Yamuna and the Saraswati rivers as part of the 55-day Kumbh Mela, or Pitcher Festival. Sunday was one of the holiest days to bathe.                      

People missing at the Kumbh Mela is the stuff of legend in India and at least a dozen films have been made on the theme. On Sunday, like most other days, volunteers and officials used loudspeakers to give details of children  and elderly who were "found" on the river banks, having lost their families in the crowd.       

It was unclear how many people were actually missing because of the stampede.


AP