Riyadh/New York // Saudi Arabia has accused Iran of playing politics with the Haj pilgrimage tragedy as Tehran demanded an apology for the stampede that killed at least 769 people.
“I believe the Iranians should know better than to play politics with a tragedy that has befallen people who were performing their most sacred religious duty,” Saudi foreign minister Adel Al Jubeir said.
Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, who like Mr Al Jubeir is in New York for the UN General Assembly, has called for an inquiry into Wednesday’s disaster, in which at least 144 Iranians died.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Sunday demanded Saudi Arabia apologise for the stampede, as the war of words escalated.
“Instead of passing the buck and playing a blame game, the Saudis should accept their responsibility and apologise to the world’s Muslims and the bereaved families,” he said.
But Mr Al Jubeir, delivering remarks alongside US Secretary of State John Kerry, insisted that Saudi Arabia was on top of the situation.
“The kingdom has had a long history of spending tremendous resources to care for the pilgrimage to ensure that the pilgrims who come there have a successful pilgrimage,” he said.
“And we will reveal the facts when they emerge. And we will not hold anything back. If mistakes were made, who made them will be held accountable,” Mr Al Jubeir said.
“And we will make sure that we will learn from this and we will make sure that it doesn’t happen again. I won’t repeat again this is not a situation with which to play politics.
“I would hope Iranian leaders would be more sensible and more thoughtful with regards to those who perished in this tragedy, and wait until we see the results of the investigation.”
The dispute came amid tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia over the conflicts in Yemen and Syria that Riyadh views as a bid by Tehran to expand its influence in the region.
Iranian leaders have been fiercely critical of Saudi authorities’ handling of safety at the Haj, following Thursday’s stampede during the ritual stoning of the devil in Mina, near the holy city of Mecca.
At least 144 Iranians died in the crush – the highest confirmed toll among foreign nationalities. Tehran says 323 Iranians are missing.
Mr Rouhani, addressing a UN development summit in New York on Saturday, said he wanted to “emphasise the need for swift attention to the injured as well as investigating the causes of this incident and other similar incidents in this year’s Haj.”
Iranian Attorney General Ebrahim Raeisi earlier called what happened “not only incompetence, but a crime”.
Saudi King Salman, whose official title is “Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques” in Mecca and Medina, ordered “a revision” of how the Haj is organised, and a formal Saudi inquiry is under way into the stampede.
It was the worst disaster to strike the annual pilgrimage in a quarter-century.
Iran has demanded that affected countries have a role in the stampede investigation, and on Friday, Ayatollah Mohammad Emami Kashani, leading the main weekly prayers in Tehran, said the kingdom is “incapable” of organising the Haj.
“The running of the Haj must be handed over to Islamic states,” he said.
Such suggestions are “frankly ridiculous”, columnist Rasheed Abou-Alsamh wrote in Sunday’s Arab News, an English-language Saudi daily.
He said criticism of the kingdom’s Haj organisation is part of a “concerted campaign of defamation against Saudi Arabia by its enemies”.
Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari has also urged King Salman “to ensure a comprehensive and thorough exercise that will identify any flaws in Haj organisation”.
Senior Saudi officials suggested the pilgrims were at fault for not following instructions.
The interior ministry has said it assigned 100,000 police to secure the Haj and manage crowds at the event, which drew almost two million faithful.
But pilgrims blamed the stampede on police road closures and poor crowd management, during searing temperatures.
Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims were converging on a five-storey structure known as Jamarat Bridge to perform the stoning ritual when the stampede happened nearby.
“The police blocked all the roads, leaving us with only one route,” said Hamza Musa Kabir, 55, of Kano, Nigeria.
Mr Kabir was in a procession heading towards the Jamarat Bridge when, he said, police let pilgrims returning from the stoning site use the same route.
“Because those returning were moving in the opposite [direction] of the surging crowd, there was a stampede,” said Mr Kabir, who became trapped under another man and had to disrobe to escape.
The stampede was the second tragedy to cast a pall over this year’s Haj.
A massive construction crane collapsed on Mecca’s Grand Mosque several days before and killed 109 people, many of them pilgrims.
For years, the Haj was marred by stampedes and fires, but it had been largely incident-free for almost a decade after safety improvements and billions of dollars’ worth of infrastructure investment.
*Agence France-Presse
