World
Stampede that killed 121 in India was caused by severe overcrowding and lack of exits, authorities say
- Severe overcrowding and a lack of exits led to a stampede at a religious festival in northern India on Wednesday, resulting in at least 121 deaths.
- Five people died on Wednesday morning, and 28 people are still hospitalized.
- The event drew around 250,000 people, although it was only permitted to accommodate 80,000.
Severe overcrowding and a lack of exits contributed to a stampede at a religious festival in northern India, authorities said Wednesday, leaving at least 121 people dead as the faithful surged toward the preacher to touch him and chaos ensued.
Five of those died on Wednesday morning, local official Manish Chaudhry said, and 28 people were still being treated in a hospital.
Deadly stampedes are relatively common at Indian religious festivals, where large crowds gather in small areas with shoddy infrastructure and few safety measures.
DEATH TOLL CLIMBS TO 116 IN RELIGIOUS GATHERING STAMPEDE IN INDIA
Some quarter of a million people turned up for the event Tuesday that was permitted to accommodate 80,000. It’s not clear how many made it inside the giant tent set up in a muddy field in a village in Hathras district in Uttar Pradesh state.
Family members of 37-year-old Ruby, victim of a stampede, mourn after receiving her body from a mortuary as they prepare to leave for their hometown, outside Hathras district hospital, Uttar Pradesh, India, on July 3, 2024. Thousands of people at a religious gathering rushed to leave a makeshift tent, setting off a stampede Tuesday that killed more than a hundred people and injured scores. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)
It was also not clear what sparked the panic. But the state’s chief minister, Yogi Adityanath, told reporters that a crowd rushed toward the preacher to touch him as he was descending from the stage, and volunteers struggled to intervene.
An initial report from the police suggested that thousands of people then thronged the exits, and many slipped on the muddy ground, causing them to fall and be crushed in the crowd. Most of the dead were women.
The chaos appeared to continue outside the tent also as followers again ran toward the preacher, a Hindu guru known locally as Bhole Baba, as he left in a vehicle. His security personnel pushed the crowd back, causing more people to fall, according to officials.
AT LEAST 60 DEAD AFTER STAMPEDE AT RELIGIOUS GATHERING IN NORTHERN INDIA
Authorities are investigating and searching for Bhole as well as other organizers, whose whereabouts are not known.
Binod Sokhna, who lost his mother, daughter and wife, wept as he walked out of a morgue on Wednesday.
“My son called me and said, ‘Papa, mother is no more. Come here immediately.’ My wife is no more,” he said, crying.
People injured in a stampede receive treatment at Hathras district hospital, Uttar Pradesh, India, on July 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)
Bhole’s Sri Jagar Guru Baba organization had spent more than two weeks preparing for the event.
Followers of the guru from across the state, which with over 200 million people is India’s most populous, traveled to the village, with rows of parked vehicles stretching nearly 2 miles.
State official Ashish Kumar said there were insufficient exits in the vast tent. It’s not clear how many there were.
Experts said the event violated safety norms. “The function was held in a makeshift tent without ensuring multiple exit routes,” said Sanjay Srivastava, a disaster management expert.
Members of a forensic team investigate the scene a day after a fatal stampede in Fulrai village of Hathras district, Uttar Pradesh, India, on July 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)
On Tuesday, hundreds of relatives had gathered at local hospitals, wailing in distress at the sight of the dead, placed on stretchers and covered in white sheets on the grounds outside. Buses and trucks also carried dozens of victims to morgues.
Sonu Kumar was one of many local residents who helped lift and move dead bodies after the disaster. He criticized the preacher: “He sat in his car and left. And his devotees here fell one upon another.”
“The screams were so heart-wrenching. We have never seen anything like this before in our village,” Kumar added.
In 2013, pilgrims visiting a temple for a popular Hindu festival in central Madhya Pradesh state trampled one another amid fears that a bridge would collapse. At least 115 were crushed to death or died in the river.
In 2011, more than 100 people died in a crush at a religious festival in the southern state of Kerala.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Friday rejected Virginia’s bid to restore a congressional map that would have given Democrats a chance to pick up four seats in the closely divided House of Representatives.
The court’s order, issued without any noted dissent, is the latest twist in the nation’s mid-decade redistricting competition. It was kicked off last year by President Donald Trump urging Republican-controlled states to redraw their lines and was supercharged by a recent Supreme Court ruling severely weakening the Voting Rights Act that opened up even more winnable seats for the GOP.
In recent days, the justices have sided with Republicans in Alabama and Louisiana who hope to redo their congressional maps to produce more GOP-leaning seats following the court’s voting rights decision.
But the Virginia situation was different, stemming from a 4-3 ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court that struck down a constitutional amendment that voters narrowly passed just last month.
The state court found that the Democratic-controlled legislature improperly began the process of placing the amendment on the ballot after early voting had begun in Virginia’s general election last fall.
The Supreme Court typically doesn’t intervene in state court proceedings unless they present an issue of federal law. Virginia Democrats had hoped to persuade the justices that the Virginia court misread federal law and Supreme Court precedent that hold that, even if early voting is underway, an election does not happen until Election Day itself.
Virginia’s amendment had been intended as a response to Republican gains in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio, and to blunt a new map in Florida that just became law. Once the Virginia amendment passed, it briefly turned the nationwide redistricting scramble into a draw between the two parties.
That was unraveled by the Virginia Supreme Court’s decision.
The state’s attorney general, Democrat Jay Jones, slammed the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision, saying it was another example of what he described as a national attack on voting rights and the rule of law.
“Let’s be clear about what is happening. Donald Trump, Republican state legislatures, and conservative courts are systematically and unabashedly tilting power away from the people for Trump’s political gain,” Jones said in a statement issued late Friday night.
The state’s top Democrats had disagreed about whether it was even too late for help from the Supreme Court. “Time grows short, but it is not yet too late,” lawyers for the Democratic leaders of the legislature as well as the state told the justices in a brief filed Friday.
A day earlier, the office of Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger already had confirmed that the state will hold this year’s elections under the current districts established in 2021. Last month, Virginia Commissioner of Elections Steve Koski said a court order was needed by this past Tuesday to set the district lines for primary elections on Aug. 4.
Spanberger reacted to Friday’s decision by saying both courts had nullified the votes of the more than 3 million Virginians who cast ballots in the April 21 special election.
“These Virginians made their voices heard — casting their ballots in good faith to push back against a President who said he’s ‘entitled’ to more seats in Congress before voters go to the polls,” she posted on her X account.
The leader of the state Republican Party said the justices made the right call.
“Wisely, the Supreme Court of the United States has confirmed the judgment of the Supreme Court of Virginia,” state party chairman Jeff Ryer said. “This should once and for all put to rest the Democrats’ effort to disenfranchise half of Virginia.
___
Associated Press writer Safiyah Riddle in Montgomery, Alabama, contributed to this report.
World
Trump says Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, second in command of ISIS globally, killed in US-Nigerian operation
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President Donald Trump announced late Friday that U.S. and Nigerian forces carried out an operation that killed a global ISIS leader.
Trump identified the terrorist as Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, whom he described as ISIS’s second-in-command globally.
“Tonight, at my direction, brave American forces and the Armed Forces of Nigeria flawlessly executed a meticulously planned and very complex mission to eliminate the most active terrorist in the world from the battlefield,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
“Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, second in command of ISIS globally, thought he could hide in Africa, but little did he know we had sources who kept us informed on what he was doing,” Trump continued. “He will no longer terrorize the people of Africa, or help plan operations to target Americans.”
100 US TROOPS LAND IN NIGERIA AS ISLAMIC MILITANTS THREATEN WEST AFRICA REGIONAL SECURITY
President Donald Trump sits at a table monitoring military operations during Operation Epic Fury against Iran at the White House in Washington, D.C., on March 2. (The White House via X Account/Anadolu/Getty Images)
Trump also thanked the Nigerian government for its cooperation in the mission.
“With his removal, ISIS’s global operation is greatly diminished,” he added.
Additional details surrounding the mission were not immediately available.
Fox News Digital has reached out to the White House for comment.
US MILITARY IN SYRIA CARRIES OUT 10 STRIKES ON MORE THAN 30 ISIS TARGETS: PHOTOS
The announcement comes after U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said it carried out multiple strikes against more than 30 ISIS targets in Syria in February as part of a joint military effort to “sustain relentless military pressure on remnants from the terrorist network.”
CENTCOM said U.S. forces struck ISIS infrastructure and weapons-storage targets using fixed-wing, rotary-wing and unmanned aircraft.
DEADLY STRIKE ON US TROOPS TESTS TRUMP’S COUNTER-ISIS PLAN — AND HIS TRUST IN SYRIA’S NEW LEADER
The U.S. military carried out ten strikes against more than 30 ISIS targets in Syria following a December ambush that killed U.S. troops. (CENTCOM)
Trump told reporters on Jan. 27 that he had a “great conversation” with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“All of the things having to do with Syria in that area are working out very, very well,” he said at the time. “So, we are very happy about it.”
CENTCOM announced in February that more than 50 ISIS terrorists had been killed or captured and more than 100 ISIS infrastructure targets struck during two months of targeted operations in Syria.
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The U.S. launched Operation Hawkeye Strike in response to an ISIS ambush that killed two U.S. service members and an American interpreter Dec. 13, 2025, in Palmyra, Syria.
Fox News Digital’s Ashley J. DiMella contributed to this report.
Lebanon’s Ministry of Health said Israeli attacks have killed 2,951 people since March 2 with at least 8,988 wounded.
Published On 16 May 2026
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