Prosecutors have indicted two police officers over the bungled response to the deadly 2022 crowd crush in the district of Itaewon, officials said Monday.

The indictment of the two officers who were overseeing patrol duties at a precinct station in Itaewon came a year and three months after the crowd crush on Oct. 29, 2022, which killed 159 people on a Halloween weekend in the district's entertainment neighborhood.

The Seoul Western District Prosecutors Office has charged them with professional negligence resulting in death, accusing them of failing to properly respond to 11 emergency calls seeking police help in the last hours of the deadly accident.

One of them was also charged with entering a false record of visiting the accident site on that day into the police intranet, the officials said.

The two are the last government officials to be indicted in connection with the crowd crush, among the 23 that a special police investigation team referred to the prosecution in January 2023.

Last week, the prosecution indicted Kim Kwang-ho, the chief of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, on charges of professional negligence for the botched disaster response, making him the highest-ranking government official indicted in connection with the crowd crush. (Yonhap)