RIYADH // A towering construction crane toppled over on Friday during a violent rainstorm in Mecca, crashing into the Grand Mosque and killing at least 107 people ahead of the start of the Haj later this month.
Images posted by social media users showed a grisly scene, with police and onlookers attending to numerous bodies lying amid pools of blood on the polished mosque floors.
Saudi Arabia’s civil defence authority provided a series of rising casualty numbers on its official Twitter account as ambulances whisked the wounded to area hospitals. As of early Saturday, it said those injured in the disaster numbered 238.
A photo released by the authority showed police and workers in hard hats inspecting a pile of collapsed concrete slabs inside a part of the sprawling, ornately decorated mosque. Another showed the base of the toppled red-and-white crane tilted upwards at a sharp angle.
Images aired on Saudi Arabian state television showed the crane’s metal boom smashed through what appeared to be the roof of the mosque.
Ahmed bin Mohammed Al Mansouri, the spokesman for the presidency of the Mecca and Medina mosque affairs, said in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency that the accident happened on Friday afternoon during a severe storm carrying strong winds and heavy rain.
Authorities did not provide details on the victims’ nationalities, but it was likely that the tragedy will touch several countries.
US secretary of state John Kerry expressed his condolences and said the US stands with Saudi Arabia and “all Muslims around the world in the aftermath of this dreadful incident at one of Islam’s holiest sites.”
Mr Al Mansouri said the crane, which was being used in construction work at the mosque, struck a circular area around the Kaaba and a nearby walkway.
Pan-satellite Al Jazeera Television broadcast footage from inside the mosque compound said to be from the aftermath of the accident, showing the floor strewn with rubble and what appear to be pools of blood.
Another video, on a Twitter posting, captured the apparent moment of the red-and-white crane’s collapse during a heavy rainstorm, with a loud boom, screams and confusion.
The governor of the Mecca region, Prince Khalid Al Faisal, quickly called for the formation of a committee to investigate the cause of the accident. He directed all appropriate authorities to provide support for all of those injured, according to a statement from Mecca principality public affairs head Sultan Al Dosari that was carried on SPA.
Other Saudi officials could not immediately be reached or referred queries to the civil defence statements.
Several cranes surround the mosque to support an continuing expansion and other construction work that has transformed the area around the sanctuary.
Steep hills and low-rise traditional buildings that once surrounded the mosque have in recent years given way to shopping malls and luxury hotels — among them the world’s third-tallest building, a giant clock tower that is the centrepiece of the Abraj Al Bait complex.
The construction giant Saudi Binladin Group is leading the mosque expansion and also built the Abraj Al Bait project.
It was not immediately clear who owned the crane that collapsed.
The millions of pilgrims who visit the country’s holy sites each year pose a considerable security and logistical challenge for the Saudi government, and large-scale deadly accidents have occurred on a number of occasions in years past.
In 2006, more than 360 pilgrims died in a stampede at the desert plain of Mina, near Mecca. A crush of pilgrims two years earlier left 244 dead.
The worst Haj-related tragedy was in 1990, when 1,426 pilgrims died in a stampede in an overcrowded pedestrian tunnel leading to holy sites in Mecca.
* Associated Press
