At least 64 Hindu pilgrims have been killed and scored injured in a stampede in the southern Indian state of Kerala, the state home minister has said.
"Sixty-four bodies have been recovered from the accident site. Seventy-five persons have been hospitalised with injuries. Most of them are in three hospitals," Kodiuyeri Balakrishnan told the news agency AFP.
As details were still emerging about the cause of Friday's stampede, local media reported that it was triggered by a bus crash at a religious festival, as people walked along a narrow forest path, returning from the shrine of Sabarimala.
The annual two-month Maravilakku festival attracts millions of worshippers to the remote temple of the Hindu deity Ayyappan.
Friday's ceremony marked the end of the festival, and an estimated 150,000 devotees were thought to have taken the narrow path out of the densely forested hills where the stampede took place, the Press Trust of India (PTI) reported.
"Relief operations are going on," Balakrishnan said, amid suggestions from other officials that the death toll could rise further.
The PTI reported that the rescue effort was being hampered by the remote location, with thick forest and narrow roads making the region difficult for emergency services to access.
R S Gavai, governor of Kerala, expressed his sadness at the loss of life. "I am deeply shocked and saddened at the tragic accident," the PTI reported him saying.
"I share my profound grief of the bereaved families and pray for the speedy recovery of those injured."
Deadly stampedes have previously occurred at temples in India, where large crowds - sometimes hundreds of thousands of people - gather in congested areas with no real safety measures.
In March last year, police in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh blamed lax safety for the deaths of 63 people in a stampede outside another Hindu temple.
At least another 10 people died in a stampede at a temple in the state of Bihar in October. In 2008, more than 145 people died in a stampede at a remote Hindu temple at the foothills of the Himalayas.
