Five Saudi security agents were killed in a shootout with terror suspects in the Saudi capital as nearly 2 million Muslims from around the world began the annual hajj pilgrimage to Mecca amid heightened security after a year of terror attacks in the kingdom.
Bombings killed 51 people at housing compounds for foreigners in 2003; Saudi and US officials have blamed the al-Qaeda network led by Osama bin Laden, a Saudi exile.
PHOTO: AFP
Suspected terrorists exchanged fire with Saudi security forces raiding a house in Riyadh on Thursday, and the Interior Ministry said five Saudi agents and the father of a suspect were killed. Several suspects were detained.
But in Mecca, 800km to the west, pilgrims said they were too overwhelmed by the spiritual experience of the hajj to be worried about terrorism.
"The moment you arrive here, all you feel is pure tranquility," said Umm Usama, a Palestinian from the West Bank city of Tulkarem.
As to the chance of a terrorist attack, Umm Usama simply shrugged, pointed to the sky, and said: "We depend on Him."
A Libyan pilgrim, Bakr Salem, said Mecca was sacrosanct.
"I do not think that any real Muslim dares to do anything to the pilgrims, God's guests," Salem said on Thursday. "And even if anything happened, nothing is better than dying in God's house as a martyr."
Interior Minister Prince Nayef told reporters this week that if anybody did disrupt the hajj, "we are totally prepared to deal with it firmly."
Thousands of troops stood watch on Thursday as the pilgrims -- men dressed in identical seamless white garb and women covered except for their hands and faces -- circled the Kaaba at the Grand Mosque, Islam's holiest site, in the first ritual of the pilgrimage.
The Kaaba is a large cubic structure that Muslims face during their five daily prayers. Muslims consider the Kaaba as the house of God and believe it was built by Ibrahim and his son Ismail.
Iraqi pilgrim Saadi Saber said the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime constituted a new beginning for him.
"This is the first time we come here after the fall of Saddam's regime and it feels so different -- we are so free," he said.
"We've seen a lot of terrorism from the former regime, and we've suffered in wars. We do not fear terrorism any more," he said. "The real terrorizer has gone."
Qassem Saleh, an Indonesian businessman, said the perpetrators of terrorist attacks are not true Muslims.
"It is not for religious reasons that they do what they do, they are after political gains," he said, "but we are not here to be involved in politics, we are here to perform a religious duty at the heart of Islam."
Authorities were bracing for heavy showers in Mecca over the next few days that are likely to turn Mina -- a huge tent city that comes alive only during the pilgrimage -- into a muddy, slippery camp. There were also concerns over power outages and rock slides from surrounding mountains.
Weather reports predicted clouds and possibly rain beginning yesterday.
Saudi authorities, however, said they were fully prepared, with more than 2,000 rescue vehicles and 118 boats at their disposal, according to Lieutenant General Saad al-Tuweijry, head of the Civil Defense.
To improve drainage, the municipality has widened the water passages in the nearby mountains. They have also worked to stop huge rocks from rolling down the mountain side.
Thirty hospitals and several health centers have provided more than 150 ambulances and 4,000 beds. More than US$16.5 million was spent on new health projects at this year's hajj.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
RSS