Germany: Love Parade permanently canceled after 19 dead in tunnel mob

A criminal investigation began on Sunday after 19 people were crushed to death at the Love Parade, one of Europe's biggest music festivals.

The event has been permanently cancelled after the accident in the entrance tunnel during the weekend.

Sixteen people were killed at the scene, three more died in hospital and almost 350 people suffered fractures and other injuries at the festival held in the western German city of Duisburg on Saturday.

Among the dead were Bosnian, Dutch, Australian, Chinese, Spanish and Italian nationals, police said. Sixteen out of the 19 victims, between 20 and 40 years old, have been identified.

As Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, paid her respects to the dead and injured, an exhaustive investigation into the accident began amid accusations that organizers ignored safety warnings.

Police initially said that overcrowding at the only entrance tunnel resulted in a stampede and then a crush. Disaster struck at 5:30pm on Saturday at the exit to the underpass as police were trying to prevent people from entering the site.

"The police announced by loudspeaker that participants should return in the direction of the train station," said one eyewitness.

However, authorities later said the festival grounds were not yet filled at the time of the accident.

But while estimates of the size of the crowd have varied -- organizers say there were up to 1.4 million -- it is clear that as too many people tried to pass through the 450-foot tunnel, panic broke out.

Festival-goers described the mass of people "pushing with unstoppable force," and hundreds were trapped inside the hot, airless tunnel, which had no escape routes.

"At some point the column (of people) got stuck, probably because everything was closed up front, and we saw that the first people were already lying on the ground," said Udo Sandhoefer, a partygoer.

Emergency services said many died from asphyxiation or crushed spinal cords.