Diplomats on Tuesday said that at least 550 pilgrims died during the hajj, underscoring the gruelling nature of the pilgrimage which again unfolded in scorching temperatures this year.
At least 323 of those who died were Egyptians, most of them succumbing to heat-related illnesses, two Arab diplomats coordinating their countries’ responses said.
“All of them [the Egyptians] died because of heat” except for one who sustained fatal injuries during a minor crowd crush, one of the diplomats said, adding that the total figure came from the hospital morgue in the al-Muaisem neighborhood of Mecca.
Photo: AFP
At least 60 Jordanians also died, the diplomats said, up from an official tally of 41 given earlier on Tuesday by Amman.
The new deaths bring the total reported so far by multiple countries to 577, an Agence France-Presse tally showed.
The diplomats said that the total at the morgue in al-Muaisem, one of the biggest in Mecca, was 550.
The hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam and all Muslims with the means must complete it at least once.
Temperatures hit 51.8°C at the Grand Mosque in Mecca on Monday, the Saudi Arabian National Meteorology Center said.
Earlier on Tuesday, the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Cairo was collaborating with Saudi Arabian authorities on search operations for Egyptians who had gone missing during the hajj.
While a ministry statement said that “a certain number of deaths” had occurred, it did not specify whether Egyptians were among them.
Saudi Arabian authorities have reported treating more than 2,000 pilgrims for heat stress, but had not updated that figure since Sunday and had not provided information on fatalities.
Journalists in Mina, outside Mecca, on Monday saw pilgrims pouring bottles of water over their heads as volunteers handed out cold drinks and ice cream to help them keep cool.
Saudi Arabian officials had advised pilgrims to use umbrellas, drink plenty of water and avoid exposure to the sun during the hottest hours of the day.
However, many of the hajj rituals, including the prayers on Mount Arafat that took place on Saturday last week, involve being outdoors for hours in the daytime.
Some pilgrims described seeing motionless bodies on the roadside and ambulance services that appeared overwhelmed at times.
About 1.8 million people took part in the hajj this year, 1.6 million of them from abroad, Saudi Arabian authorities said.
Each year tens of thousands of people attempt to perform the hajj through irregular channels, as they cannot afford the often costly procedures for official hajj visas.
This places these off-the-books pilgrims at risk, as they cannot access air-conditioned facilities provided by authorities along the hajj route.
One of the diplomats who spoke to reporters on Tuesday said that the Egyptian death toll was “absolutely” boosted by a large number of unregistered Egyptian pilgrims.
“Irregular pilgrims caused great chaos in the Egyptian pilgrims’ camps, causing the collapse of services,” said an Egyptian official supervising the country’s hajj mission. “The pilgrims went without food, water, or air-conditioning for a long time.”
They died “from the heat because most people had no place” to take shelter, the official said.
Earlier this month, Saudi Arabian officials said that they had cleared hundreds of thousands of unregistered pilgrims from Mecca ahead of the hajj.
Other countries to report deaths during the hajj this year include Indonesia, Iran and Senegal.
Most countries have not specified how many deaths were heat-related.
Saudi Arabian Minister of Health Fahd bin Abdul Rahman al-Jalajel on Tuesday said that health plans for the hajj had “been successfully carried out,” preventing major outbreaks of disease and other public health threats, the Saudi Press Agency reported.
Health officials “provided virtual consultations to over 5,800 pilgrims, primarily for heat-related illnesses, enabling prompt intervention and mitigating the potential for a surge in cases,” it said.
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