At least 8 dead in stampede at US concert

A crush caused by a crowd surge killed at least eight people and wounded several others at rap star Travis Scott’s Astroworld music festival in Texas on Friday night, authorities said.

Officials said the crush happened as “the crowd began to compress towards the front of the stage” around 9:00pm when Scott was performing. There were around 50,000 people in the audience at Houston’s NRG Park.

“That caused some panic and it started causing some injuries, people began to fall out, become unconscious and it created additional panic,” Houston fire chief Samuel Pena said at a press conference.

“We had at least eight confirmed fatalities tonight and scores of individuals that were injured,” he said, adding the cause of death could not be confirmed until after medical exams were completed.

Pena said 17 people were rushed to hospital, with 11 of them in “cardiac arrest.”

Scott was on stage when the incident occurred and stopped his act on several occasions when he saw fans in distress near the stage, the Houston Chronicle reported.

Survivors described chaotic scenes of people squeezed up against one another and many struggling to breathe, the Chronicle reported.

“We were hanging on to each other to avoid getting separated,” one survivor said. “If you let go, you could easily drift apart.”

One concert-goer quoted in the paper described carrying a man who had fallen to safety over barricades in the arena and watching paramedics perform CPR.

Senior Harris County official Lina Hidalgo said it was “an extremely tragic night.”

Houston police are investigating the cause of the incident and looking at video footage from the arena.