Beijing, Feb 06: At least 37 people were killed and 15 injured in a stampede on a crowded bridge during a new year lantern festival in a Beijing suburb, state media said today. Most of those who died were crushed to death as the crowd panicked when one man slipped on the steep ''Moon'' bridge at a park in the outlying Miyun district last evening, the reports said.
''One spectator stumbled on a bridge in the park and a lot of people fell down accordingly. Many of them were suffocated to death,'' the official news agency said.
The accident happened at 7:45 pm in Miyun's Mihong Park, where people were celebrating the lantern festival on the 15th day of the Chinese Lunar New Year, a day regarded as the last day of the spring festival holiday.
Hundreds of people had crowded into the park for the festival in Miyun, about 70 kilometres north of Beijing city centre.
President and Communist Party chief Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao ordered an immediate inquiry into the accident, said the agency. Bureau Report