Hajj stampede death toll rises to 769: Saudi minister

AP reporter Aya Batrawy, speaking on Thursday’s All Things Considered, said that “from the survivors that I spoke to, they say that for them, it’s pretty clear that the Saudi authorities didn’t manage the crowds properly”.

An ambulance helicopter lands atop a hospital next to the site…

More than 700 are dead and about 800 more are injured after a stampede in the tent city of Mina, near Mecca, Saudi Arabia, according to a CNN article.

On Friday, the kingdom’s health minister, Khalid al-Falih, said the stampede might have been touched off “because some pilgrims moved without following instructions by the relevant authorities”.

Abu Ahmed Akif made the comments Friday.

The redevelopment of sites throughout the holy city of Mecca is necessary to accommodate large numbers of pilgrims.

Meanwhile, Iran has urged Saudi Arabia to find 344 of its citizens who are still unaccounted for.

In his speech to the 193-nation United Nations General Assembly, Rouhani emphasized the need for an investigation into “the causes of this incident and other similar incidents in this year’s hajj“. Egypt’s Religious Endowments Minister Muhammad Mokhtar Gomaa told the MENA news agency the death toll for his country had risen to 14.

Pilgrims from several nations, participating at the ongoing pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, lost their lives to the stampede.

Alsudani (Arabic) newspaper has further quoted the director of the Sudanese Hajj and Umrah commission Al-Motee’ Mohammed Ahmed as admitting that one Sudanese pilgrim died during the stampede while two others were injured.

Around 2 million people from 180 countries are participating in the hajj this year. Special emergency forces were deployed across Mina with dozens of troops at every level of the five-storey bridge used for the stoning ritual in which pebbles are thrown at walls.

Hundreds of thousands of Muslims have been preparing to leave the annual pilgrimage to Mecca after its worst disaster in a quarter of a century.

His brother Mohamed Mow said: “Moments before the tragedy he had taken a photo holding the hand of our mother-in-law”.

He said another 30 Egyptians were injured.