SEOUL — A knot of people jostled and shoved each other on Wednesday in a narrow alleyway in Seoul, before filing patiently past a barricade of police officers in a crowd control drill held ahead of the one-year anniversary of a deadly Halloween crush.

The exercise, showcasing an artificial intelligence-backed network of nearly 1,000 closed-circuit TV cameras designed to detect and alert against dangerous crowding, was displayed on banks of large screens watched by officials ready to swing into action.

The effort comes after a crowd surge last year led to a crush in a narrow alley in the Itaewon nightlife district, killing 159 people in a disaster blamed on a lack of preparation and crowd control measures, with early calls for help going unanswered.

This year, officials in the South Korean capital said they would work with police, emergency services and local officials to ensure “not a single person gets hurt” during Halloween celebrations.

“The drill focused on how to ensure the safety of citizens by monitoring the situation in real time with the help of cutting-edge science and technology,” said the city’s mayor, Oh Se-hoon.

About 150 volunteers participated in the dry run of an early warning system that will include 909 CCTV cameras in 71 locations by yearend, aiming to analyze crowd movement and density before alerting authorities to signs of danger.

Sixteen areas will be specially monitored by officials ready to intervene and disperse people in response to warnings triggered when three or more individuals are counted in every square meter of any given space.

“It used to be visual assessment in the past, but now we’re operating CCTV… which enables video analysis,” said city safety official Ahn Hyoung-jun, adding that the information gathered would compensate for human error.

The effort was “positive,” said Paek Seung-joo, a specialist in fire and disaster protection at the Open Cyber University of Korea, while warning that preventing large gatherings was critical.

“The fundamental solution is to prevent it from happening in the first place.”

The plan unveiled this week covers just Seoul, rather than the entire nation, he added.

“For that, the central government, not a local government, has to take the lead and come up with a plan to anticipate crowding, manage it, and respond in the event of an emergency.”

Many families of the victims of last year’s disaster say the police investigation left many questions unanswered, while deploring that nobody had been held responsible for the deaths.

The government, which rejected calls to dismiss top officials, has said it had worked hard to set up a system to prevent such disasters and which needed to be properly implemented.

The Seoul anniversary has unnerved authorities elsewhere in the run-up to this year’s celebrations.

In Tokyo, foreign tourists and locals have been urged not to gather at the famed Shibuya scramble crossing in the Japanese capital, which had been a popular spot for Halloween revelers to meet up prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Officials have grown fearful of a disastrous crowd crush similar to the one in the Itaewon district in Seoul, South Korea,” Shibuya city officials said in a statement.

The safety campaign has involved a ban on street drinking over the Halloween weekend, while videos posted on social media urge: “On Halloween night, everyone should stay away from Shibuya.” — Reuters

HUNDREDS of police fanned out across the state of Maine hunting for a man wanted in connection with mass shootings at a bar and a bowling alley in the town of Lewiston, as news outlets reported a death toll ranging from 16 to 22, with dozens more wounded.

Officials said there were multiple casualties but declined to provide figures.

State and local police identified Robert R. Card, 40, who reportedly had been committed to a mental health facility over the summer, as a person of interest in the case. Earlier, they posted on Facebook photographs of a bearded man in a brown hoodie and jeans at one of the crime scenes, holding what appeared to be a semi-automatic rifle in the firing position.

“We have literally hundreds of police officers working around the state of Maine to investigate this case to locate Mr. Card, who is a person of interest,” Maine Public Safety Commissioner Mike Sauschuck told a news conference.

Police found a white SUV they believe Robert R. Card drove to the town of Lisbon, about 7 miles (11 km) to the southeast, and Mr. Sauschuck said people were asked to remain indoors in both Lewiston and Lisbon.

Several media reported that a Maine law enforcement bulletin identified Mr. Card as a trained firearms instructor and member of the US Army reserve who recently reported that he had mental health issues, including hearing voices. It also said he threatened to shoot up a National Guard base. “Card was also reported to have been committed to mental health facility for two weeks during summer 2023 and subsequently released,” said the notice from the Maine Information & Analysis Center.

Reuters could not authenticate the bulletin. The Associated Press reported it was circulated to law enforcement officials.

The army did not immediately respond to requests for information about Mr. Card, including details on his service record.

The bloodshed rocked the largely rural state of Maine in the northeastern corner of the US bordering Canada.

Police said gunfire first broke out shortly before 7 p.m. local time. The bar and the bowling alley are about four miles (6.5 km) apart.

Lewiston is a former textile hub and town of 38,000 people in Androscoggin County about 35 miles (56 km) north of Maine’s largest city, Portland.

“A recreation center. A bowling alley. A neighborhood bar. Places Americans frequent and should feel safe… these are the crime scenes of multiple shootings tonight in Maine,” said Kris Brown, president of Brady, a gun safety advocacy group, in a statement.

Maine lacks several major types of gun safety laws, including assault weapons regulation, universal background checks, and “red flag” laws that allow law enforcement to temporarily disarm people legally deemed dangerous, according to Brady.

At a reunification center in Lewiston’s “sister city” Auburn, just across the Androscoggin River, some families were discovering that relatives who had been at the bar and bowling alley had been killed in the shooting, Auburn Mayor Jason Levesque told reporters.

Officials were interviewing witnesses of the shooting “of all ages” at an undisclosed safe location on Wednesday night, Levesque said.

President Joseph R. Biden was been briefed and will continue to receive updates, a US official said in Washington.

The president spoke by phone individually to Maine Governor Janet Mills, Senators Angus King and Susan Collins, and Congressman Jared Golden about the shooting in Lewiston and offered full federal support in the wake of the attack, the White House said.

The range of estimated fatalities would be on par with the number of homicides that normally occur in Maine in any given year. The number of annual homicides in the state has fluctuated between 16 and 29 since 2012, according to Maine State Police.

The number of US shootings in which four or more people were shot has surged since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, with 647 occurring in 2022 and 679 projected to occur in 2023, based on trends as of July, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive.

The deadliest modern US mass shooting on record is the massacre of 58 people by a gunman firing on a Las Vegas country music festival from a high-rise hotel perch in 2017. — Reuters