SHANGHAI — People unable to contact friends and relatives streamed into Shanghai hospitals Thursday, anxious for information after a stampede during New Year's celebrations killed 36 in the worst disaster to hit one of China's showcase cities in recent years. Another 47 people received hospital treatment, 13 of whom were seriously injured, following the chaos about a half-hour before midnight, the city said in a statement.
At one of the hospitals where the injured were being treated, police brought photos out of dead victims who they had not been able to identify, causing dozens of waiting relatives to crowd around the table. A saleswoman in her 20s, who refused to give her name, said she had been celebrating with three friends. "I heard people screaming, someone fell, people shouted 'don't rush,'" she said, adding she could not reach one of her friends. "There were so many people and I couldn't stand properly."
A man who would give only his surname, Li, said he had identified the body of his wife's cousin among the dead at the hospital. The victim had gone out to celebrate the New Year on the Bund and his wife was on her way from Anhui province in the east, said Li. Xia Shujie, vice president of Shanghai No. 1 People's Hospital, told media that some of the people brought to them were suffering from serious suffocation.