The number of Indian Haj pilgrims killed in the stampede near Makkah in Saudi Arabia has risen to 22, the government said on Saturday.
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Over 130 Iranians were among the over 750 people who died.
In a statement posted on his official website, Ayatollah Khamenei said the Islamic world had a lot of questions for Saudi Arabia.
“Sadly, Riyadh isn’t offering enough cooperation on the missing pilgrims and the transfer of the dead and injured“, it quoted Rouhani as saying. However, Enver Gunenc, head of Hajj and Umrah Services General Directorate, corrected the death toll in the stampede to two Turkish pilgrims.
King Salman ordered the formation of a committee to investigate the incident during the five-day pilgrimage in which around two million people from more than 180 countries took part.
Iranian Authorities has said that the Saudi Royal Family “must accept responsibility” for Thursday’s stampede at Mina.
“And we will make sure that we will learn from this and we will make sure that it doesn’t happen again”, the minister added, urging Iranian leaders to wait for the investigation results.
Saudi Arabia, under growing pressure to account for a crush that killed more than 700 people at the hajj pilgrimage, suggested pilgrims failing to follow crowd control rules bore some blame for the worst disaster at the event for 25 years.
Meanwhile, speaking to the country’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef, top Saudi cleric Abdulaziz Al Al Sheikh said he did not hold authorities responsible for the disaster.
Survivors and witnesses have said inadequate security near the most sacred sites on the annual Muslim pilgrimage in Mecca contributed to the stampede.
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A massive construction crane collapsed on the Grand Mosque in the nearby holy city of Mecca days beforehand, killing 109 people, many of them pilgrims. The Saudi charge d’affaires in Tehran was also summoned to the Foreign Ministry, which conveyed Iran’s “strong protest” over the failure to protect pilgrims, the official IRNA news agency reported. In one of the final steps of the hajj, pilgrims throw stones at three large pillars here in a symbolic casting away of evil.
