Okaz newspaper reported that, for the first time in 35 years, Grand Mufti Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh, Saudi Arabia’s top cleric, will not deliver a sermon to the Arafat crowds.
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Issa Rawasm, the Saudi vice secretary of the Ministry of Hajj and Umrah, said that the aim of the device is to “equip all pilgrims”, with over 1.4 million expected to arrive for the holy festival.
“The aim is to equip all pilgrims” from overseas, who are expected to number more than 1.4 million, he said.
More than 2,400 people, including at least 460 Iranian pilgrims, lost their lives in a stampede in Saudi Arabia on September 24, 2015.
Jane Kinninmont, deputy head of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House, a London think-tank, said the stampede exposed “clearly some big organisational failings, to say the least”.
Almost 1, 36,000 Indians are performing Haj this year.
Although Hajj days begin from Fajr on Saturday but shifting of pilgrims took place in the night itself for the sake of convenience of pilgrims.
As well as increasing direct security measures a number of smartphone applications have been launched to provide religious and logistical information to pilgrims.
An Iranian official says Saudi Arabia has deliberately barred Iranians from making the Hajj pilgrimage and refused to discuss ways to prevent the reoccurrence of a deadly crush during last year’s Hajj rituals in Mina, near the holy city of Mecca.
“One new technology that could potentially lessen the likelihood of stampedes this year is the advent of a number of new phone applications”, said Fahad Nazar, political analyst at the Virginia-based JTG Inc and former political analyst at the Saudi embassy in Washington. Tehran blamed the Saudis for the collapse of the negotiations over visas and other procedures, while Riyadh accused Iran of politicizing hajj. “They have stabbed Muslims in the heart”.
A survivor who spoke to the New York Times recounted the horror of their experience, including hearing shouts of “I’m dying, I need water” from fellow pilgrims who lay mangled on the ground as thousands of people converged in Mina. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. Iran did not send pilgrims to the hajj in 1988 and 1989, while Saudi Arabia severed diplomatic ties over the violence and Iranian attacks on shipping in the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq war. But protesters offered their harshest criticism for Saudi Arabia.
Al-Yahya said that 216 foreign pilgrims who did not observe Hajj instructions were sent back to their respective countries.
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“Seven thousand people were martyred, were killed, from 39 countries”, Ohadi said.
