Eight teenagers were confirmed dead and 26 others injured in a stampede at a central China school Monday night, local authorities said early Tuesday, Xinhua reported.
Students and teachers at the privately-run Yucai Middle School in Xiangxiang, a small city in Xiangtan, Hunan Province, were in tears and stood in tribute before classes began Tuesday to remember the dead and pray for the injured.
Classes were undisrupted Tuesday, but the campus remained gloomy, with students exchanging worried looks and anxious parents peeping in to make sure their children were doing well.
Many teachers continued working after a sleepless night. "It's like a nightmare," said school official Chen Xinwei. "It's hard to believe those children are gone forever."
Seven boys and a girl, aged from 11 to 14, were killed and another five were seriously injured in the stampede at around 9:10 p.m., after the students' evening study session.
The students were surging toward a staircase to go downstairs to their dorms when a girl tripped and caused dozens to lose their balance and fall in a 3 to 5-square meter area.
The injured students were being treated at three hospitals in Xiangxiang. Another eight students were under medical observation, though they appeared uninjured.
"I tried to turn back and take another way, but the crowd behind me pushed me forward," said Xiao Wu (not a real name), a first-year student who woke up from a coma Tuesday morning.
The five-story school building had four exits, but the majority of the students had chosen the one closest to their dormitory building because of the heavy rain Monday night, said Chen Xinwei.
The blood-stained staircase linking the first and second floors where the tragedy happened is less than 1.5 meters wide. The area was cordoned off by police Monday night.
A joint investigation team comprising safety, public security and procuratorate officials are investigating the cause of the accident. The principal and chairman of the school board are being questioned.
The Xiangxiang CPC committee has removed the city's education chief Zhu Qinghua from his post and vowed to penalize all others who are held responsible for the accident.
The 12-year-old Yucai Middle School, a boarding school with 3,500 junior high students, covers 8 hectares. It has a reputation as one of the best schools in Xiangxiang, a county-level city with a population of 900,000.
While public schools offer junior high education for free, Yucai charges relatively high tuition fees, so most of its students are from well-off families in the city.