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The army also said 17 Boko Haram fighters died in the fighting following the pre-dawn strike.

The high number of dead Iranians was “due to the inefficiency and mismanagement of the Saudi rulers in handling the largest gathering of Muslims”, the Hajj and Pilgrimage Organization, which oversees its citizens’ participation in the hajj, said in...

A few Nigerian pilgrims coming through Murtala Muhammed worldwide Airport, Lagos, who were returning from this year’s hajj exercise in Saudi Arabia, have narrated the circumstances that led to the death of 64 Nigerians and 240 still missing in the stampede that killed 717...

Ali Marashi, head of the Iranian Red Crescent medical center in Tehran, said Iran had given up hope that any of those missing were still alive.

In Thursday’s stampede, pilgrims were walking toward the largest of the pillars when there was a sudden surge in the crowd about 9 a.m., causing a large number of people to fall, the Saudi Press Agency said, citing civil defense officials.

“This is not a situation with which to play politics”, Adel al-Jubeir, the foreign minister, said in New York.

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.

“The Saudi Arabian government has its own regulation, tradition, culture and procedures in dealing with such cases”, Saifudin said from Mecca. “This has not allowed us enough freedom in our effort to identify” the victims.

At least 155 Iranian pilgrims died in a crush of pilgrims on Thursday near Mecca and 300 other Iranians remain unaccounted for, including former ambassador to Lebanon Ghazanfar Roknabadi, Iranian state media has said.

Saudi Arabia said Tuesday that the photos are of those who died during the entire pilgrimage and not just at the disaster in Mina.

Meanwhile, Saudi Health Minister Khalid al-Falih said the stampede “was perhaps because a few pilgrims moved without following instructions by the relevant authorities”.

A few 64,000 Iranian pilgrims will return home in the coming days by 218 flights to different cities throughout the country. The reports have set up a war of words between mainly Shiite Iran and overwhelmingly Sunni Saudi Arabia.

But Saudi Interior Ministry spokesman Maj Gen Mansour al-Turki said the pictures included those of people who died of natural causes.

“The Saudi obstinacy, playing a] blame game and shirking its heavy responsibility for the death of several thousand pilgrims of the House of God will further tarnish Saudi Arabia’s image in the world“, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Marzieh Afkham,...

He assured that the injured pilgrims would be provided with all possible medical treatment on their return to Pakistan by the government. Saudi officials have yet to comment on the discrepancy in the toll as countries around the world struggle to identify their dead.