Seoul crowd crush: local police offices raided in investigation - The Guardian

South Korea’s nationalist constabulary bureau connected has raided section constabulary departments successful the capital, Seoul, and the city’s Yongsan territory bureau arsenic it investigates whether authoritative ineptitude contributed to a crowd surge that killed 156 people successful the neighbourhood of Itaewon.

The raids came a time aft the bureau acknowledged Seoul constabulary failed to enactment for hours contempt receiving astatine slightest 11 exigency calls from pedestrians informing astir a swelling assemblage of Halloween revellers getting retired of power up of the crush connected Saturday successful a constrictive alley adjacent Hamilton Hotel.

The bureau said members of its peculiar probe portion were retrieving documents from the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency and Yongsan’s constabulary station, territory office, occurrence section and different offices.

Local officials and constabulary look questions astir wherefore they did not employment assemblage power measures oregon capable unit successful the bustling nightlife territory contempt anticipating a assemblage of 100,000 radical pursuing the easing of Covid restrictions.

The nationalist constabulary chief, Yoon Hee-keun, besides acknowledged that its archetypal investigations recovered that constabulary officers failed to efficaciously grip calls notifying authorities astir the imaginable information of the assemblage gathering successful Itaewon.

Yoon said constabulary had launched an interior enquiry into the officers’ handling of the exigency calls and different issues, including the on-the-spot effect to the assemblage surge successful Itaewon that night.

His bureau besides released the transcripts of 11 calls placed to the police’s 112 exigency hotline by pedestrians successful Itaewon connected Saturday, the archetypal made astatine astir 6.30pm, 4 hours earlier the crush adjacent Hamilton Hotel.

The unidentified caller, who was adjacent a store successful the alley wherever the crush occurred, pleaded for constabulary to enforce controls connected the country due to the fact that “too galore radical are going up and down and it’s excessively scary”.

“People aren’t capable to travel down but (people) are besides pushing up and I deliberation (they) could get crushed to death,” the caller said.

In transcripts of the 11 calls, the callers utilized the Korean connection meaning “crushed to death” 13 antithetic times to convey their concerns.

South Korea’s interior curate and exigency bureau chief, the Seoul politician and the caput of the Yongsan ward office, which governs Itaewon, person each offered nationalist apologies.

As of Wednesday, 156 radical were confirmed dormant and 157 were being treated for injuries aft they were trampled successful the assemblage surge successful a constrictive alley that runs betwixt the edifice and a dense enactment of storefronts.