Update | Tragic New Year stampede not triggered by coupons thrown from building: Shanghai police
Forty-nine people were injured, including 13 in a critical condition, in crush on the Bund
Shanghai police on Thursday said that the stampede killing 36 people in the city's historic riverside area on the New Year's eve was not triggered by coupons thrown from a nearby building.
The police said on its official microblog account that the coupons were thrown after the stampede and only a handful of people came forward to pick them up.
Some social media reports initially suggested that the stampede might have been caused by a large amount of banknotes raining down from a nearby building. The banknotes were later identified as coupons of a club in the building by internet users and confirmed by the Shanghai police.
The police earlier admitted that they underestimated how many people were likely to turn up and deployed fewer officiers, because "there were no events last night." The light show and countdown that had been hosted on the Bund for the past three years were moved to another site this year to alleviate the burden on traffic.
Witnesses told the South China Morning Post that the tragedy could have been prevented if police had managed the crowd as it had in the past.
“The tragedy could have been avoided if enough police officers had been dispatched to maintain order,” Ma Xiaobang, a witness in his early sixties, said. “I have been there every year to join in the fun but there had never been such chaos as this.”
The cause of the crush remained under investigation, Xinhua said.