Deadly crowd at the American Music Festival in Houston | Currently USA | DW

Samuel Pena, Houston’s fire chief in Texas, said 17 people were taken to hospital. 11 of them had a heart attack. More than 300 people received medical treatment at the field hospital where the festival takes place in NRG Park.

“The crowd began to lurk in front of the stage, causing panic and injuries,” Beena said. “People fell down, passed by, and panicked.”

The alleged mass panic erupted at an event in 2018 by American rapper Travis Scott, who founded the festival. According to a report in the Houston Chronicle, the 29-year-old had to interrupt his performance several times due to incidents in the audience before the deadly crowd.

Further performances were canceled

About 50,000 people attended the two-day AstroWorld Festival in central Houston, Texas, according to the fire department. Performances scheduled for Saturday were canceled following the crash. Artists like SZA and Bad Bunny will also be performing at the event. Authorities set up a contact point to search for relatives of the missing.

Crowds of these young people are waiting to be allowed into the area where the ceremony will take place

Local police said they were examining video recordings from the arena to eliminate the crash. “Within minutes, many went down and suffered a kind of heart attack,” investigators explained. The exact background of the incident is unknown. CNN television said the organizers’ report was not yet available.

The tragedy is reminiscent of the fate of those killed in a crowd of 21 at the 2010 Duisburg love parade. At the Danish Roskilde Festival, in the summer of 2000, nine people died in front of the stage at a concert hosted by the American rock band Pearl Jam. They were knocked down and trampled by the crowd from behind.

In 1999, more than 50 people were killed in a panic after a concert in the Belarusian capital, Minsk. At a Tottenham Hossain show in Dசsseldorf in 1997, a 16-year-old boy suffocated as thousands of fans rushed inside the Rhine Stadium. About 300 people were injured.

kle / se (afp, rtr, dpa, ape)