A new tally raised the death toll of the stampede last month near Mecca, Saudi Arabia to at least 1,470 people, which would make it the deadliest disaster in the history of the annual hajj pilgrimage.
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A senior Saudi religious leader on Friday denounced “lies” being spread about the kingdom after more than 1,350 people died in tragedies that struck this year’s pilgrimage.
Saudi officials insist their official figure of 769 killed and 934 injured remains accurate, though an investigation into the causes of the tragedy is ongoing and authorities have not updated the casualty toll since September 26, two days after the disaster.
The Hajj draws roughly 2 million pilgrims to Mecca each year, an observance that lends its host, Saudi Arabia, unrivaled prestige across the Muslim world.
Survivors told the AP’s Aya Batrawy that when the crowds intersected, people began pushing past one another. Authorities have said the crush occurred when two waves of pilgrims converged on a narrow road, causing hundreds of people to suffocate or be trampled to death.
1994: About 270 people are killed in a stampede during the Mina ritual.
“You can’t count how many bodies there were”. Iran said it had 465 pilgrims killed, while Egypt lost 148 and Indonesia 120. “Transparency is the most powerful card that they have”, he said. Hundreds remain missing, according to these countries.
“The efforts of the kingdom will not be undermined by the talk of the slanderers that only know to spread lies”, Sudais said during weekly prayers at the Grand Mosque, Islam’s holiest site. Shia power Iran, Sunni Saudi Arabia’s Mideast rival, has blamed the disaster on the kingdom’s “mismanagement” and accused Riyadh of a cover-up, saying the real death toll exceeds 4,700, without providing evidence to support the claim.
The king, whose official title is “Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques” in Makkah and Medina, also took immediate steps including suspending the developer from new public contracts.
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“This is really unfortunate that in an event where people are dead, the families don’t have any kind of transparency”, said Madawi al-Rasheed, a visiting professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science’s Middle East Center.
