Iran Doubles Hajj Stampede Death Toll

Emir of Kano and the leader of the Nigeria Central Coordinating Team for the 2015 hajj Muhammadu Sanusi II has demanded that the Saudi Arabia government publish the details of victims of last Thursday’s stampede on a dedicated website.

Also on Wednesday, the Bahrain-based US Fifth Fleet said the Combined Maritime Force patrolling the area intercepted a “stateless” cargo dhow carrying arms headed towards Somalia, in “international waters of the North Arabian Sea”. There was no comment from Iranian officials.

Religious Affairs Minister Lukman Hakim Saifuddin, who is in Mecca, said this week that Jakarta sent a diplomatic note to Riyadh asking that Indonesian medical teams be able to directly check bodies being unloaded from containers, state-run news agency Antara reported. “Besides Saudi Arabia’s inability to deal those killed or injured in the stampede incident, they haven’t allowed other countries to investigate the incident either”, he said. More than 700 people, including at least 130 Iranians, were killed in a crush near Mecca last week.

While Iranian sources confirmed the handshake, which took place beyond the view of cameras, they claimed that the encounter between Zarif and Obama had been “incidental”, occurring as the Iranian delegation was leaving the United Nations hall.

In the statement, Hajj and Pilgrimage Organization offers condolences to all Iranians for the loss of 464 pilgrims, while 20 are still hospitalized. Another 35 pilgrims lost their lives in 2001, during the final day of pilgrimage at Mina.

Ghazanfar Roknabadi, 49, the country’s former ambassador to Lebanon, a highly sensitive post, is among the four.

Roknadabi was in Beirut in the summer of 2013, when the Iranian embassy was targeted by a suicide bombing carried out by an al-Qaeda affiliate.

In the past couple of years – and with the wars in Iraq, Syria and Yemen – the already-strained relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia has been worsening. However, Saudi Interior Ministry spokesman Maj.

Indeed, just one week after the tragedy, there’s enough conspiracy theories to go around.

Iran’s state-run Mehr News Agency alleged that the Hajj incident was “probably pre-planned”.

Shamkhani added that the hajj incident was not “deliberate” and that it was likely the result of “incompetence and inefficiency”.

“Saudi Arabia failed to help the injured and are causing trouble in transfer of the bodies to Iran… the slightest disrespect to Iranians will be met with a harsh reaction from us”, Khamenei told graduates of the Iranian Army’s military academies in the city of Noshahr. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.