TWENTY people were crushed to death and more than 500 seriously injured at the Love Parade music festival in Germany on Saturday. Reporter Jon Livesey, who was at the event, describes the distressing scenes.

BEING far from the biggest dance music fan, I had no idea the world’s largest ‘techno’ party would be taking place 20 minutes down the road from where I was staying in Dusseldorf until I arrived in the city for a stag party on Thursday.

But when a German girl told the 13 of us about the festival we deemed it too big an opportunity to pass up.

As we followed thousands of ravers through the streets of Duisburg towards the main arena spirits were high.

However, the first warning signs appeared when we reached a standstill 500 yards from where security were frisking people for bottles.

The event had always been held in Berlin, Germany’s capital city, where it was a huge success.

But it was clear that Duisburg was nowhere near big enough for 1.4 million revellers.

As the crowd became more compressed I was crushed by people from every direction.

It was so bad that I could feel my ribs and lungs beginning to cave in.

I remember thinking that the scenes were similar to the Hillsborough disaster.

We didn’t know it at this point that we were yet to see the worst part.

There was only one way in and out of the arena and that was through a long tunnel.

We made it about half way through before grinding to a halt.

There was a mile-long sea of people in front of us and the crowd behind us was becoming more dense very quickly.

People just yards in front were so desperate to get out of the pandemonium that they were scrambling up onto a ramshackle cabin, while others were climbing steps on to railway lines to escape the crowd.

There were too many people in too small a space.

I realised something was really wrong when security began dragging people out of the crowd.

We decided to turn around and fight our way out of the tunnel.

Two minutes after we emerged police stopped people from entering the tunnel and ambulances were flooding to the area.

I saw people being carried out on stretchers, looking pale and lifeless.

It was difficult to tell whether they were alive or not.

I’m pretty sure that if we hadn’t left when we did it, some of us could have been badly hurt or even killed.