Mil­i­tary teams were search­ing Mon­day for peo­ple miss­ing af­ter a 143-year-old sus­pen­sion bridge col­lapsed in­to a riv­er Sun­day in the west­ern In­di­an state of Gu­jarat, send­ing hun­dreds plung­ing in­to the wa­ter and killing at least 133 in one of the coun­try’s worst ac­ci­dents in years.

As fam­i­lies mourned the dead, at­ten­tion was turn­ing to why the bridge, built by the British in the late 1800s and tout­ed as an “en­gi­neer­ing mar­vel,” col­lapsed and who might be re­spon­si­ble.

The lo­cal gov­ern­ment had award­ed a 15-year con­tract to main­tain and man­age the bridge to a Mor­bi-based com­pa­ny, Ajan­ta Man­u­fac­tur­ing Pvt. Ltd., main­ly known for mak­ing clocks, mos­qui­to rac­quets and elec­tric bikes.

It re­opened the bridge, which spans a wide sec­tion of the Machchu riv­er, on Oct. 26. That’s the first day of the Gu­jarati New Year, which co­in­cides with the Hin­du fes­ti­val sea­son, and the new­ly re­opened at­trac­tion drew hun­dreds of sight­seers.

Sandeepsinh Za­la, a Mor­bi city of­fi­cial, told the In­di­an Ex­press news­pa­per the com­pa­ny had re­opened the bridge with­out first ob­tain­ing a “fit­ness cer­tifi­cate.” That claim could not be in­de­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fied, but the state gov­ern­ment said it had formed a spe­cial team to in­ves­ti­gate the dis­as­ter.

Au­thor­i­ties said the struc­ture col­lapsed un­der the weight of hun­dreds of peo­ple. Se­cu­ri­ty footage of the dis­as­ter showed bridge shak­ing vi­o­lent­ly and peo­ple try­ing to keep hold of its ca­bles and green-coloured met­al fenc­ing be­fore the alu­mini­um walk­way gave way and crashed in­to the riv­er.

Vi­su­als from the dis­as­ter site showed the bridge split in the mid­dle and the met­al walk­way hang­ing down, its ca­bles snapped in places. At least 177 sur­vivors were pulled from the riv­er and teams from the army, navy and air force were look­ing for oth­ers still miss­ing, said Ji­gar Khunt, an in­for­ma­tion de­part­ment of­fi­cial in Gu­jarat.

State min­is­ter Harsh Sanghvi told re­porters that 133 peo­ple were con­firmed dead and many oth­ers were ad­mit­ted to hos­pi­tals in crit­i­cal con­di­tion. Emer­gency re­spon­ders and res­cuers worked overnight to search for the sur­vivors. Most of the vic­tims were teens, women and old­er peo­ple, he said.

It was not im­me­di­ate­ly clear ex­act­ly how many peo­ple were on the bridge when it col­lapsed but sur­vivors said it was so dense­ly packed that the crowd was un­able to quick­ly move to safe­ty when its ca­ble be­gan to snap.

“There were just too many peo­ple on the bridge. We could bare­ly move,” Sidik Bai, 27, said while re­cov­er­ing from in­juries in a hos­pi­tal bed in Mor­bi.

Sidik said he jumped in­to the wa­ter when the bridge be­gan to crack and saw his friend be­ing crushed by its met­al walk­way. He sur­vived by cling­ing to the bridge’s ca­bles, but his friend didn’t make it.

“Every­one was cry­ing for help, but one by one they all be­gan dis­ap­pear­ing in the wa­ter,” Sidik said.

Lo­cal news chan­nels ran pic­tures of the miss­ing shared by con­cerned rel­a­tives and fam­i­ly mem­bers raced to over­crowd­ed hos­pi­tals search­ing for their loved ones.

Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Mo­di, vis­it­ing his home state of Gu­jarat, said he was “deeply sad­dened by the tragedy.” His of­fice an­nounced com­pen­sa­tion for fam­i­lies of the dead and called for speedy res­cue ef­forts.

“Rarely in my life, would I have ex­pe­ri­enced such pain,” Mo­di said dur­ing a pub­lic event in the state on Mon­day.

Mo­di was the top elect­ed of­fi­cial of Gu­jarat for 12 years be­fore be­com­ing In­dia’s prime min­is­ter in 2014. A Gu­jarat state gov­ern­ment elec­tion is ex­pect­ed in com­ing months and op­po­si­tion par­ties have de­mand­ed an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the col­lapse.

The bridge col­lapse is Asia’s third ma­jor dis­as­ter in­volv­ing large crowds in a month.

On Sat­ur­day, a Hal­loween crowd surge killed more than 150 most­ly young peo­ple who at­tend­ed fes­tiv­i­ties in Itae­won, a neigh­bour­hood in Seoul, South Ko­rea. On Oct. 1, po­lice in In­done­sia fired tear gas at a soc­cer match, caus­ing a crush that killed 132 peo­ple as spec­ta­tors tried to flee.

In­dia’s in­fra­struc­ture has long been marred by safe­ty con­cerns, and Mor­di has suf­fered oth­er ma­jor dis­as­ters. In 1979, an up­stream dam on the Machchu riv­er burst, send­ing walls of wa­ter in­to the city and killing hun­dreds of peo­ple in one of In­dia’s biggest dam fail­ures.

In 2001, thou­sands of peo­ple died in an earth­quake in Gu­jarat. Mor­bi town, 85 miles (150 km) from the quake’s epi­cen­tre in Bhuj, suf­fered wide­spread dam­age. Ac­cord­ing to a re­port in the Times of In­dia news­pa­per, the bridge that col­lapsed Sun­day al­so was se­vere­ly dam­aged. —MOR­BI, In­dia (AP)

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Sto­ry by AJIT SOLAN­KI, KRU­TI­KA PATHI and SHEIKH SAALIQ of The As­so­ci­at­ed Press.  Ai­jaz Hus­sain, Saaliq and Pathi re­port­ed from New Del­hi.