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At least 100 Hindu pilgrims have been killed and scored injured in a stampede in the southern Indian state of Kerala, officials said.
Jaya Kumar, Kerala home secretary, said on Saturday that 102 people had been confirmed dead and dozens more injured, some of them seriously.
The Friday evening tragedy unfolded in a remote, mountainous area of southern Kerala as pilgrims made their way home from an annual ceremony at the hill shrine of Sabarimala that draws three to four million people each year.
Police officials said a packed jeep had lost control and ploughed into a crowd of people packed onto a narrow road in a hilly and densely forested area 10km from the shrine.
"The accident caused a mass panic and triggered a stampede on the hillside," Rajendra Nair, the police commissioner, said.
The search for bodies and survivors had been hampered by the remote location, heavy mist and the thick forest terrain.
RS Gavai, the governor of Kerala, expressed his sadness at the loss of life.
Deadly stampedes have previously occurred at temples in India, where large crowds - sometimes hundreds of thousands of people - gather in congested areas with no real safety measures.
In March last year, police in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh blamed lax safety for the deaths of 63 people in a stampede outside another Hindu temple.
At least another 10 people died in a stampede at a temple in the state of Bihar in October. In 2008, more than 145 people died in a stampede at a remote Hindu temple at the foothills of the Himalayas.
PHOTO CAPTION
Hindu believers pray at a temple, South India.
Al-Jazeera
