{"id":134283,"date":"2015-07-14T09:03:01","date_gmt":"2015-07-14T09:03:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=134283"},"modified":"2015-07-14T09:33:14","modified_gmt":"2015-07-14T09:33:14","slug":"india-stampede-kills-22-pilgrims-in-andhra-pradesh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=134283","title":{"rendered":"India stampede &#8216;kills 22 pilgrims&#8217; in Andhra Pradesh"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"story-body\">\n<div class=\"story-body__inner\">\n<p class=\"story-body__introduction\">At least 22 pilgrims have died in a stampede on the banks of a holy river in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, local officials say.<\/p>\n<p>The Hindu pilgrims had gathered to take a dip in the Godavari river at the start of the Maha Pushkaralu festival.<\/p>\n<p>The stampede occurred at 08:00am (02:30 GMT) in the Rajahmundry district.<\/p>\n<p>Nearly 24 million pilgrims are expected to take part in the 12-day festival. Pilgrims believe that taking a bath in the river will rid them of their sins.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The incident happened as the first set of worshippers were coming out of the river after taking a dip and then got in the way of others who wanted to be in the water at an auspicious time,&#8221; AFP news agency quoted senior police official A Srinivasan Rao as saying.<\/p>\n<p>Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, who bathed in the river at the festival on Tuesday morning, said in a series of tweets that he was monitoring the situation and urged people not to panic:<\/p>\n<figure class=\"media-landscape full-width no-caption\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"js-image-replace\" src=\"http:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/624\/cpsprodpb\/14F73\/production\/_84257858_1809206a-6453-4e4a-9d81-3eec877d0821.jpg\" alt=\"null\" width=\"624\" height=\"280\" \/><\/figure>\n<figure class=\"media-landscape full-width no-caption\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"js-image-replace\" src=\"http:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/624\/cpsprodpb\/1ADB\/production\/_84257860_3c300877-60f4-427d-911e-337991110660.jpg\" alt=\"null\" width=\"624\" height=\"270\" \/><\/figure>\n<figure class=\"media-landscape full-width no-caption\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"js-image-replace\" src=\"http:\/\/ichef-1.bbci.co.uk\/news\/624\/cpsprodpb\/E3AD\/production\/_84258285_0c4bfc09-0100-4513-9872-f326c8b8f477.jpg\" alt=\"null\" width=\"624\" height=\"270\" \/><\/figure>\n<p>Deadly stampedes during religious gatherings are fairly common in India.<\/p>\n<p>In October 2013, 115 people died during a stampede at a Hindu festival in the central state of Madhya Pradesh. Most were crushed after panic broke out on a bridge near the Ratangarh temple. Others drowned when they jumped from the bridge into river waters below.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"share share--lightweight  show ghost-column\">&#8211;<\/div>\n<div class=\"share share--lightweight  show ghost-column\">Source: BBC<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At least 22 pilgrims have died in a stampede on the banks of a holy river in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, local officials say. The Hindu pilgrims had gathered to take a dip in the Godavari river at the start of the Maha Pushkaralu festival. The stampede occurred at 08:00am (02:30 GMT) [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":134292,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-134283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-papa-owusu-ankomah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=134283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/134292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=134283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=134283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=134283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}