A stampede early on April 30 at a mountainside religious celebration for Lag B’Omer on Mount Meron in northern Israel that drew tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews left at least 45 people dead and scores more injured.

By some estimates, about 100,000 people were crammed together to celebrate. The deadly crush began around 1 a.m. Friday, as celebrants began to pour out of a section of a compound where festivities were being held. The death toll of 45, released by the Health Ministry, made it one of the worst civilian disasters in Israeli history. About 150 were injured.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews traditionally gather at Mount Meron for the holiday, to dance and make bonfires around the tomb of a prominent rabbi from antiquity. Early reports indicated that a grandstand had collapsed. But as details emerged, it appeared that the crush may have occurred after celebrants slipped on stone steps leading into a narrow passageway with a metal-floored slope, setting off what the news site Ynet described as a “human avalanche.”

The annual gathering on Mount Meron, which is in the Galilee, takes place near the mystical city of Safed. The Lag B’Omer holiday is linked in Jewish tradition to the Bar Kokhba revolt against the Romans in the second century A.D. [Photo Ishay Jeusalemite/Behadrei Haredim, via Associated Press]