Death toll rises in stampede

President Aquino has directed concerned agencies to ensure that the necessary assistance is extended to the family of the Filipino who died in the hajj pilgrimage stampede in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

Saudi emergency personnel and Hajj pilgrims push a wounded person in a wheelchair.

Saudi Arabia’s most senior cleric, the grand mufti, has said Thursday’s stampede that killed more than 700 people at the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca was beyond human control.

Criticism has also been particularly strident from Saudi Arabia´s regional rival Iran, which raised to 136 Saturday the number of its people who were martyred.

In addition to the dead, 102 Iranians are known to have been injured and another 344 are unaccounted for, two days after the worst tragedy in a quarter-century at the pilgrimage to Islam’s holiest sites in Saudi Arabia.

“Those are the ones who died in various hospitals since the event”, he added.

Saudi civil defence authorities said observers had been positioned in all the passageways used by the exiting pilgrims to spot any signs of overcrowding.

Iran has said that Saudi officials should be tried in an worldwide court for what it called a crime.

The disaster happened when two large groups of pilgrims collided at a crossroads in Mina, a few kilometres east of Mecca, on their way to performing the “stoning of the devil” ritual at Jamarat.

“The unavoidable fact is that the Saudi government has been incompetent in this regard and with regard to the management of the Hajj pilgrimage, and Riyadh must accept responsibility for this”.

Officials say eight Egyptians were among hundreds killed when two waves of Muslim pilgrims collided outside Mecca during the annual hajj.

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman said in a televised speech that he’s told authorities to review all arrangements for pilgrims.

Iran’s Minister of Culture Ali Jannati, Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli and Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs Hossein Amir-Abdollahian attended the session.

Earlier this month, the pilgrims saw another deadly incident, the collapse of a construction crane inMecca which killed more than 100 people and injured at least 200.