HM condoles death of 717 in Mina crush
STONING STAMPEDE: Haj Mission says Omani pilgrims safe
MINA: His Majesty Sultan Qaboos condoled the death of at least 717 Haj pilgrims after a stampede, which also injured more than 800 in Mecca in Saudi Arabia on Thursday.
The stampede, the second deadly accident to hit the pilgrims this month following a crane collapse in Mecca, broke out during the symbolic stoning of the devil ritual, the Saudi civil defence service said. Oman Haj Mission said no pilgrims from the Sultanate were involved in the worst ever tragedy since 1990.
Bodies of pilgrims wearing traditional white clothing were left scattered by the crush, surrounded by discarded shoes, flattened water bottles and umbrellas that had been used for protection from the sun.
The civil defence service said that it was still counting the dead, who included pilgrims from different countries, and that at least 863 people had also been hurt.
Nearly two million people from across the globe were attending the Haj, one of the largest annual gatherings in the world. Iran said at least 43 of its citizens were dead and accused Saudi Arabia of safety errors that caused the accident. But a Saudi minister blamed the pilgrims themselves, saying they had not followed the rules laid out by authorities. “Many pilgrims move without respecting the timetables” set for the Haj, Health Minister Khaled al Falih told El Ekhbariya television.
“If the pilgrims had followed instructions, this type of accident could have been avoided,” he said, vowing a “rapid and transparent” investigation.
The stampede began at around 9:00 am (0600 GMT), shortly after the civil defence service said on Twitter it was dealing with a “crowding” incident in Mina, about five kilometres (three miles) from Mecca.
Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims had converged on Mina on Thursday to throw pebbles at one of three walls representing Satan, for the last major ritual of the Haj which officially ends on Sunday. A hospital official said the incident happened outside the Jamarat Bridge structure, where the stoning takes place. A group of pilgrims leaving the area collided with another group that was either moving in the opposite direction or camped outside, the official said. A Sudanese pilgrim in Mina said this year’s Haj was the most poorly organised of four he had attended.
“People were already dehydrated and fainting” before the stampede, said the pilgrim.
People “were tripping all over each other”, he said, adding that a Saudi companion had warned him that “something was going to happen”.
Helicopters were flying overhead and ambulances were rushing the injured to hospital.
At one hospital, a steady stream of ambulances discharged pilgrims on stretchers.
The incident came as the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims marked Eid al Adha, the Feast of Sacrifice, the most important holiday on the Islamic calendar.
It was the second major accident this year for Haj pilgrims, after a construction crane collapsed on September 11 at Mecca’s Grand Mosque, Islam’s holiest site, killing 109 people including many foreigners.
For years the pilgrimage was marred by stampedes and fires, but it had been largely incident-free for nearly a decade following safety improvements.
In 1990, a huge stampede in a tunnel at Mina after a ventilation system failure killed 1,426 pilgrims, mainly from Asia.
Thursday’s tragedy occurred outside the five-storey Jamarat Bridge, which was erected in the last decade at a cost of more than $1 billion and intended to improve safety during the pilgrimage.
Almost one kilometre (less than a mile) long, it resembles a parking garage and allows 300,000 pilgrims an hour to carry out the ritual.
Official figures released on Thursday said 1,952,817 pilgrims had performed this year’s Haj, including almost 1.4 million foreigners. Foreign embassies were working to identify and assist their citizens caught up in the stampede. The faithful had gathered until dawn on Thursday at nearby Muzdalifah where they chose their pebbles and stored them in empty water bottles.