RIYADH // This year’s Haj ends on Saturday with Saudi Arabian officials promising an investigation into the stampede that killed at least 719 pilgrims earlier this week.
The disaster, which also left several hundred people injured, was the second deadly accident to hit worshippers this month, after a crane collapse in Mecca killed more than 100.
At the scene, bodies lay in piles, surrounded by discarded personal belongings and flattened water bottles, while rescue workers laid corpses in long rows on stretchers, limbs protruding from beneath white sheets.
Dark-skinned and light-skinned, they died with arms draped around each other.
Condolences came from around the world, including from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, while Pope Francis expressed solidarity with Muslims and voiced the “closeness of the church” in the face of the tragedy.
The stampede broke out in Mina, about five kilometres from Mecca, during the symbolic stoning of the devil ritual. The Saudi Arabian civil defence service said it was still counting the dead, who included pilgrims from different countries.
On Friday, crowd control had improved and the number of pilgrims was much less. About two million attended this year’s Haj.
In response to the incident, King Salman ordered “a revision” of Haj organisation, the official Saudi Press Agency said, while Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayyef, who chairs the kingdom’s Haj committee, started an inquiry.
Saudi Health Minister Khaled Al Falih blamed worshippers for the tragedy.
He told El Ekhbariya television that if “the pilgrims had followed instructions, this type of accident could have been avoided”.
Mr Al Falih also said the injured were being transferred to hospitals in Mecca and if necessary on other parts of the country.
The stampede began at around 9:00am on Thursday, shortly after the civil defence said on Twitter it was dealing with a “crowding” incident in Mina.
Some witnesses blamed the authorities. One outspoken critic of redevelopment at the holy sites said police were not properly trained and lacked the language skills for communicating with foreign pilgrims, who make up the majority of those on the Haj.
“They don’t have a clue how to engage with these people,” said Irfan Al Alawi, co-founder of the Mecca-based Islamic Heritage Research Foundation.
“There’s no crowd control.”
For years, the event was marred by stampedes and fires, but it had been largely incident-free for nearly a decade following safety improvements.
Countries around the world began reporting on casualties and their missing, including Pakistan, which said at least 236 of its pilgrims were unaccounted for on Friday. Egypt’s religious endowments minister Mohammed Mokhtar Gomaa told the state-run MENA news agency the death toll for his country had risen to 14.
India said at least 14 of its citizens died in the crush, which also claimed the lives of at least four Turks, three Indonesians, three Kenyans and seven Pakistanis. Authorities in West Africa said 30 pilgrims from Mali and five from Senegal also died.
Among all those countries, Iran immediately appeared to be hardest hit, saying 131 of its pilgrims died and 85 were injured.
Iran’s state TV says the foreign ministry summoned Riyadh’s envoy to Tehran to hear the country’s protests over alleged “Saudi mismanagement” that purportedly led to the deadly Haj stampede.
The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) said it supported Saudi Arabia’s efforts to keep some 2 million pilgrims safe at the annual Haj,
* Agence France-Presse, Associated Press, Reuters
