At least 46 people have been killed and 90 injured in the southern Indian state of Kerala after a stampede at a religious festival triggered by a bus crash, NDTV television reported Friday. The accident happened on Friday evening in a remote mountainous area during a pilgrimage to the Hindu shrine of Sabarimala that draws three to four million people each year, according to organisers.
"It was bus accident first," a spokesman for the Sabarmala Trust, Rahul Eashwar, told NDTV. The channel, citing local officials and fire department sources, said 46 bodies had been retrieved with rescue services being rushed to the isolated, densely forested site amid fears the toll could be much higher.