Tragedy hits Mecca pilgrimage

2006-01-05 17:54

Mecca - Twenty-three Muslim pilgrims were killed and scores more wounded in Saudi Arabia on Thursday after a building collapsed in the latest tragedy to hit the annual hajj, said a witness.

Saudi interior ministry spokesperson general Mansur al-Turki confirmed that a building had collapsed in the city, where well more than one million people had already converged in readiness for the pilgrimage, but had no immediate word on casualties.

However, a French pilgrim who witnessed the collapse said 23 people died and more than 80 were injured after the multi-storey hostel housing mainly - Indian or Emirati pilgrims caved in following a fire.

80 people wounded

Abderrahmane Ghoul, who heads an Islamic organisation in southeastern France, said: "For the moment, I counted 23 bodies. The wounded are more than 80.

"I was present. It started with a fire in the building. A helicopter started to sprinkle water to put out the fire. Afterwards, the building collapsed."

He said the pilgrims' hostel lay just 50m from Mecca's Great Mosque, Islam's holiest shrine.

He said the death toll would have been much higher if the tragedy had not struck during one of the five daily prayers observed by Muslims, although many of the casualties were among those praying in the square outside.

Oil-rich kingdom

More than 2.5 million pilgrims were expected to converge on Mecca for the hajj, which formally kicked off on Sunday.

In the face of the massive numbers, the Saudi authorities had set a midnight on Wednesday deadline for the last pilgrims to arrive in the oil-rich kingdom.

They had also deployed some 60 000 security personnel to try to prevent any repetitions of the deadly stampedes and structural failures that had marred previous pilgrimages.

It was a matter of national pride for Saudi Arabia, which considered itself the custodian of Islam's two holiest shrines in Mecca and Medina that the annual pilgrimage went smoothly and without the deadly incidents that had marred it in the past.

Stampedes killed 251 people in 2003 and 1 426 in 1990.

Al-Qaeda sympathisers

Fire fighters and civil defence personnel were also included in the security team, which was to number 10 000 more men than last year. There was no immediate word on what might have started the fire.

In previous years, campfires had sparked infernos in pilgrim encampments, but the kingdom had also been battling deadly unrest blamed on al-Qaeda sympathisers since 2003.

Five policemen and two suspects on the kingdom's list of 36 most-wanted militants were killed in clashes, north of Riyadh, in the run-up to the pilgrimage.

The hajj was one of the five pillars of Islam and Muslims were required to make it at least once in their lifetime if they had the means to do so.

Many came from as far as Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation.

- AFP