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Hajj stampede: Bangladesh pilgrim blames Saudi Arabia for negligence
Saudi Arabia is showing signs of callousness in providing facilities and security to Hajj pilgrims, a man who regularly makes the passage has said.
Published : 25 Sept 2015, 07:35 AM
Updated : 26 Sept 2015, 11:04 AM
A Bangladeshi pilgrim had passed Mina, barely half an hour before at least 717 were killed in a stampede near the city of Makkah on Thursday. Another 863 were injured.
“This year, it appeared to me, the Saudi authorities were not caring to the Hajjees as they did before,” he told bdnews24.com, seeking anonymity.
“They were with us last night at Mujdalifa!” said the expatriate travel agent, who performs Hajj every year.
The kingdom in the Middle East earns over $8 billion on average every year as millions of Muslims travel there to perform Hajj.
He said, he performed Hajj rituals at Makkah, Mina, Arafat, before staying the night at Mujdalifa on Wednesday and moving on to Mina, where pilgrims stone the Jamarat pillars - a symbolic rejection of ‘the devil’.
“A group of Hajjis from African nations were shoving others in order to move ahead,” he said, quoting a Mina stampede survivor.
It took place around 9am local time at the intersection of Roads 204 and 223, while large crowds were heading towards Mina.
The authorities had not made adequate arrangements to provide water to the weary and the old, who were walking to Mina under the blazing sun, the pilgrim said.
He said there were no AC and cold water taps to give relief to exhausted and elderly pilgrims walking in 40 to 50 degrees temperature.
Saudi Health Minister Khaled al-Falih, however, blamed the pilgrims for the disaster, saying they had ignored the pointers.
Prince Khaled al-Faisal, the head of the central Hajj committee, blamed the stampede on "some pilgrims of African nationalities", local media reported.
Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has already said that Saudi Arabia is responsible for this tragedy.
Earlier, on Sep 12, at least 107 died after a crane crashed at Makkah’s Grand Mosque, just two weeks before the annual Hajj pilgrimage.
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