Stampede in Indian state school kills five students

A stampede in a state run school in Delhi, India has killed five students local doctors and police have reported. The school is in crowded area of the capital called Khajuri Khas.

The stampede is reported by BBC News to have taken place as a group of female students tried to run down a flight of stairs and collided with a group of male students who were trying to run up. Twenty-four other pupils were injured, five of them are critical say doctors. Early reports stated that the stampede was possibly caused by rumours that due to a short circuit, an electric current had entered into water. Following a night of heavy rain fall in Delhi, the school is currently waterlogged. State authorities have order an inquiry in the stampeding incident. Those who were wounded in the stampede were taken to Guru Teg Bahadur hospital in the city. The news agency AFP quoted a Khajuri Khas police officer as saying, "About 40 children were being moved from one section of the school to another." While police cordoned off the area around the school anxious parents gathered in large crowds at the school and at the local mortuary desperate to find out about their own children. Sheila Dixit, Delhi's Chief Minister has apparently visited the children in hospital. A medical superintendent at Guru Teg Bahadur hospital, OP Kalra has said that five of the students in hospital are listed as critical. He also says that there were between 1,300 and 1,400 pupils in the school at the time. The girls were apparently writing an exam when asked to evacuate. Mr Kalra says that the stampede happened on a staircase within the school. There were only five or six teachers available to evacuate all the children, say angry relatives.