At least 19 people were killed and about 25 others were injured, on Saturday, in eastern India, when a stampede began following a sudden downpour of rain during a Hindu religious gathering, according to what authorities and local media reported.
The Prime Minister of West Bengal, Suvendhu Adhikari, told reporters that among the dead was a 7-year-old girl, adding that 25 other people were injured outside a pavilion designated for celebrating the Hindu Durga Puja festival in the city of Kolkata. He added: “The identities of 6 victims have been identified,” according to what was reported by Agence France-Presse.
A senior police official said that an announcement caused a state of “confusion” after the rain began at night, explaining that “the crowd that was waiting outside the pavilion began to advance quickly, and then people quickly fell to the ground, which led to a stampede.”
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi commented on the incident in a brief post on Facebook, saying: “The stampede in Kolkata is painful. “I sympathize with the bereaved families, and I wish a speedy recovery to the injured.”
“The West Bengal government is providing all possible support to the affected families,” he added.
Adhikari initially announced that 17 people had been killed, before the Press Trust of India later reported that the toll had risen to 19 dead.
The agency reported that the bodies of 9 victims were handed over to their families, noting that the police confiscated surveillance camera recordings of the festival.
Video clips taken before the accident showed huge crowds waiting to enter the pavilion designated for the celebration, in an area that includes narrow corridors that only allow a limited number of people to pass at one time, according to the Indian Express newspaper.
Deadly stampedes occur frequently at mass Indian gatherings, especially during religious occasions. Due to poor organization and gaps in safety procedures.
Last year, a stampede during the Kumbh Mela religious festival killed 30 people and injured others, while 11 fans died in Bengaluru during celebrations of the city's team winning its first title in the Indian Premier League for cricket.
In the same year, 36 people were killed in a stampede during an election rally for an actor-turned-politician in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.
In 2024, a stampede during a Hindu religious gathering in the state of Uttar Pradesh in northern India killed 121 people.
On Saturday, Sri Lanka witnessed a nationwide power outage following a network malfunction that was likely caused by solar energy production exceeding demand, according to authorities.
Two hours after the holiday, the entire country was still deprived of electricity, without any information being released about when the electrical supply would be restored.
The General Electricity Distribution Company announced that its engineers are working to fix the fault, which may be due to an excess of solar energy production.
Energy Minister Anura Karunathilaka said he hopes for a gradual return to power, calling on owners of solar panels to disconnect them from the grid.
The entire electrical grid was put out of service in February 2025 after solar energy production exceeded consumption on a day that witnessed exceptional solar radiation. It took more than six hours to restore power.
Tax incentives have prompted many families to purchase solar panels and to pump their surplus production into the national grid, which sometimes causes an imbalance that is difficult for the operator to contain.
The solar energy production capacity in Sri Lanka exceeds 3,000 megawatts, while electricity demand ranges between 2,000 and 2,500 megawatts per day.
Since Saturday is a holiday in the country, it is likely that solar energy consumption was lower than production.
The government hopes to increase solar energy production to about 4,400 megawatts in the next three years, which represents an increase of 388 percent compared to 2024, according to Agence France-Presse.
Continuing fires in Indonesia that have blanketed parts of Southeast Asia in toxic smog have led the regional climate and fire monitoring body to declare the highest alert level in the region.
The Singapore-based ASEAN Center for Specialized Meteorology said on its website in a monitoring update on Saturday that “alert level three for the South ASEAN region has been activated.”
The center adopts a warning system consisting of four levels from zero to 3, in which the highest level is activated if there is “a great risk of severe cross-border smog in the region,” according to Agence France-Presse.
The danger includes monitoring active and continuous fire hotspots, with the spread of smog of moderate to severe density over two or more consecutive days, coinciding with the continuation of dry weather and wind blowing that pushes the fog towards neighboring countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
The warning was issued on Friday, noting that similar warnings were issued twice earlier this year, specifically on August 26 and March 27.
The smog that has persisted for months has caused a sharp rise in cases of respiratory problems, and has led to the closure of schools in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and East Timor.
On Saturday, Singapore came in second place in the direct ranking placed by the “IQ Air” platform for the most polluted major cities in the world, behind Baghdad, while Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, came in third place. All readings showed “very dangerous” levels.
On Friday, Singapore announced that it would send warnings to seven companies in Indonesia that it identified as responsible for these fires, warning at the same time that the worst may be yet to come.
A spokesman for the Philippine Foreign Ministry said that the smog problem will be discussed in upcoming meetings before the ASEAN summit scheduled for November in Manila.
