Iranian Foreign Ministry to Send Special Committee to Saudi Arabia

However, the protests and the tensions show deep friction between the Sunni kingdom and the Shiite powerhouse.

In 1990, about 1,400 pilgrims were suffocated or trampled to death during a stampede in a pedestrian tunnel leading out of the city – one of the worst disasters in the modern history of the pilgrimage.

This tragedy comes only days after a huge construction crane collapsed into Mecca’s Grand Mosque, claiming the life of more than 100 people and leaving over 200 others injured.

The street where the incident took place is about 12 meters (36 feet) wide and lined with barricades, behind which are tents of hajj tour groups. If this is true, they might not have been made conscious of the lurking danger in surging forward to pick up pebbles and throw them at the wall, representing the three devils, in the midst of a sea of moving people. Abdullah Lotfy of Egypt told the Associated Press, “People were climbing over one another just to breathe… The report said the presence of the prince in the middle of the population prompted a change in the direction of the movement of the pilgrims and a stampede”, Press TV said.

“They don’t have a clue how to engage with these people”, said Irfan al-Alawi, cofounder of the Mecca-based Islamic Heritage Research Foundation. “These people died miserably and somebody is responsible”.

“The Saudis say, after every disaster, ‘It is God’s will, ‘” Mohammed Jafari, an adviser to Haj and Umrah Travel, said on Radio 4’s Today on Friday.

Sushma, who is in the U.S., said: “The exact number will be known after confirmation by Saudi authorities”.

King Salman ordered the formation of a committee to investigate the incident during the five-day pilgrimage in which around 2 million people from more than 180 countries took part.

His advice to people planning to undertake the pilgrimage was to listen to the instructions of hajj operators and avoid performing the rituals during peak times. “The great heat and fatigue of the pilgrims contributed to the large number of victims”, he said.

In further comments after a meeting with the president of Macedonia, Erdogan touched on the civil war in Syria.

Iran said 131 of its nationals were among the victims, and accused regional rival Saudi Arabia of safety errors.

There are about 40 people in each group, said the Muslim Council of Wales.

“I am calling on the Saudi Arabia’s government: Give us the management to Turkey”.

In Lebanon, meanwhile, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said the Saudi government bears responsibility for the deadly stampede.

Iran, arch-enemy of the Saudi Royal Family, insisted that Riyadh “must accept responsibility for this”. He added that “mismanagement is definitely the cause” of the tragedy. In Tehran on Friday, thousands of angry protesters cursed Saudi Arabia’s rulers, chanting “death to the al-Saud family”. That is something that needs to be sorted out, of course, among Muslims because Mecca is not only the heritage of Saudi Arabia but of the entire Muslim world, but that is going to have to be sorted out as a larger question of Saudi relations with the rest of the world and especially the Muslim world. “The Saudi officials should be held accountable”.

“At this time of electronic age and the close circuit cameras install in Mecca and environment, the authority can easily know how the stampede started and who caused it, ” he said.

In a statement Iyad Madani, the secretary-general of the 57-nation OIC, hoped that “no party would seek to take advantage” of the pilgrimage to “divide rather than unite”. He previously served as the kingdom’s hajj minister.

Former Iraqi Prime minister Nuri al-Maliki, an ally of Iran and foe of Riyadh, said the incident was “proof of the incompetence of the organizers of the pilgrimage season”.