Videos show the horrific crush at an Israeli religious festival that led to at least 45 deaths and is being called a national tragedy

• At least 45 people were killed at a Jewish religious festival Thursday night in northern Israel.
• A bottleneck of attendees caused a stampede at the event at Mount Meron. About 150 were injured.
• Videos showed glimpses of the chaotic scenes of one of Israel’s worst-ever disasters.
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A stampede at a large gathering of ultra-Orthodox Jews in northern Israel Thursday night led to the deaths of at least 45 people.

As many as 100,000 people gathered at Mount Meron Thursday night to celebrate Lag B’Omer, a festival dedicated to a 2nd century rabbi that involves lighting bonfires, praying, and dancing, according to the Associated Press.

Witness video from the event shows throngs of people, standing shoulder to shoulder, trying to make their way down an incline, between metal partitions, when some begin to slip and fall.

As well as the deaths, at least 150 people were injured.

-ישראל כהן (@Israelcohen911) April 29, 2021

-Al Arabiya English (@AlArabiya_Eng) April 30, 2021

According to Reuters, dozens were asphyxiated or trampled before the crowds were ordered to disperse and emergency reponders came in to treat the injured and remove the dead.

“A pyramid of one on top of another was formed. People were piling up one on top of the other. I was in the second row. The people in the first row – I saw people die in front of my eyes,” an injured man told reporters from his hospital bed, according to Reuters.

-Belaaz (@TheBelaaz) April 29, 2021

A death toll that may still rise

The stampede happened on the men’s side of the gender-segregated festival. Children are among the dead, Reuters reports.

Another video shows the dead being lined up near the site, covered with white cloth.

-פלר חסן נחום Fleur Hassan-Nahoum (@FleurHassanN) April 30, 2021

Many of the victims still haven’t been identified, according to Reuters. For those that have, funerals were being hastily carried out on Friday, before the start of the Jewish Sabbath at sunset, the AP reports.

The incident is now believed to be the deadliest civilian disaster in Israel’s history.

The festival was the first mass religious gathering since Israel ended all of its coronavirus restrictions, following one of the fastest vaccination efforts in the world.

Who’s to blame?

Velvel Brevda, a rabbi who witnessed the stampede, told the AP that he believes the police are to blame for the tragedy.

Brevda said that police put up barriers that prevented people leaving through exits that had been open in previous years.

Brevda said the government was responsible for the deaths of “beautiful holy Jews that were killed here for no reason whatsoever, just to prove a point that they’re in charge of this place instead of the Orthodox Jews being in charge.”

Israel’s Justice Ministry said the police’s internal investigations department would be launching an inquiry, the AP reports.

Safety concerns

Even before the coronavirus outbreak, there were concerns about safety risks of the event, according to Reuters.

A police spokesman said that capacity this year was similar to previous years, but that this year the bonfire areas were partitioned off as a coronavirus precaution, according to Reuters.

Israeli media suggested that this may have caused the bottleneck of traffic, Reuters reports.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the site around noon on Friday and called it “one of the worst disasters that has befallen the state of Israel.”