Dozens of worshippers were injured when an escalator went haywire at a Burmese temple.

Dramatic footage shows locals screaming as devotees riding a downward-moving escalator stumbled on top of each other at the crowded Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon during a Buddhist holiday on October 17.

The mechanism had earlier been stationary due to a power outage but lurched back to life while people were walking down the stairs.

Witnesses said that dozens of people were injured in the chaos that followed.

Zaw Min, one of the attendees who recorded a video, said: 'I was walking up the steps. I heard people shouting and I didn't know what it was. But then someone said the escalator was moving.

'People were stuck. Some were standing on them. There were many people who were given first aid.'

Devotees flocked to temples and sacred sites across Myanmar to celebrate Thadingyut Full Moon Day, which marks the end of the three-month Buddhist Lent. The holiday is celebrated with festive street parades, offerings to monks, and pilgrimages to pagodas and monasteries.

The Shwedagon Pagoda is a gilded Buddhist stupa in Yangon, formerly Rangoon under British development when the nation was named Burma. It is considered one of the most sacred sites in the country and is believed to enshrine several historical Buddhist relics.