One Bolt Of Lightning Kills 11 Tourists, Injures Nearly A Dozen More

A single lightning strike killed at least 11 people and injured nearly a dozen at a popular tourist site Sunday in Jaipur, India.

According to BBC News, the victims were taking selfies in the rain at the 12th Century Amer Fort on top of a watchtower when the bolt of lightning struck.

"There was a tower there. When the lightning struck, the tower's wall collapsed, many people were buried under it. Since the fort is on a hill, when the debris was falling and space reduced, some people also fell into a ditch," Shankar Lal Saini, a senior disaster management official in Jaipur, told CNN.

Saini continued to tell the news outlet that the incident occurred around 6:30 p.m. local time, with a rescue operation handled by police and civil defense force officials carried out until 7 a.m. on Monday.

At the time of the lightning strike, 27 people were on the watchtower and the wall of the fort, BBC News reported. Some people jumped to the ground at the time of the strike.

A law official told local media that most of the victims were young people.

A total of 11 bodies were recovered, including women and children. They were declared dead on arrival at the city’s Sawai Man Singh Hospital, with another 11 people listed in stable condition at the hospital, CNN said.

This is not the only location where people were killed by lightning strikes in the area. BBC News reported that the that were dozens of victims in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, India. More deaths were reported on Sunday alone across Rajasthan state, where Jaipur is located, according to local media reports.

According to India's National Crime Records Bureau, lightning strikes contributed to 2,885 deaths in 2017 and 2,358 deaths in 2018.