On September 24, a stampede broke out when the pilgrims were taking part in the stoning of the devil (Satan) in Mina during annual Hajj pilgrimage rituals which according to the Saudi Health Minister Khalid al-Falih, left 769 pilgrims martyred and 934 injured. Within hours, Khamenei blamed “improper measures and mismanagement” for the disaster.
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So far, 169 Iranian pilgrims have been pronounced dead and almost 300 Iranians remain missing.
Iran has summoned the Saudi charge d’affaires three times to ask Riyadh for more cooperation over the incident.
Saudi Arabia’s top religious leader has said that the stampede was beyond human control.
Able-bodied Muslims are required to perform the five-day pilgrimage once in their lifetime, and each year poses a massive logistical challenge for the kingdom. Meanwhile, the number of injured and missing Iranian pilgrims are 46 and 298, respectively.
Saudi Arabia and Iran are religious and regional rivals for influence.
“This is not a situation with which to play politics”, Adel al-Jubeir, the foreign minister, said in New York.
“We will reveal the facts when they emerge, and we will not hold anything back”. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, yesterday demanded that Saudi Arabia apologise for a stampede at the haj pilgrimage that killed nearly 770 people, at least 144 of them Iranians.It says much about the animosity between Iran and Saudi Arabia that a calamity involving the deaths of hundreds of pilgrims to Mecca should plunge relations between the two countries into even greater crisis. Protesters chanted “I’ll kill those who killed my brothers!” and demanded the embassy be shut down.
Iran has repeatedly voiced outrage at the deaths of 131 of its nationals at the world’s largest annual gathering of people.
The interior ministry has said it assigned 100,000 police to secure the hajj and manage crowds at the event, which drew nearly two million faithful.
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There are many lessons to be learnt from the tragedy that befell so many pilgrims performing Hajj, but there is no reason to doubt that Saudi Arabia will work both to discover the reasons for it and to prevent such a thing in the future. The recent tragedy is the second disaster to strike Makkah in two weeks, after a crane collapsed at the Grand Masjid, killing 109 people.
