At least 1,301 individuals died throughout this 12 months’s annual Hajj pilgrimage that came about amid excessive warmth, a Saudi official mentioned late Sunday.
Some 83% of the fatalities have been unregistered pilgrims, Saudi Health Minister Fahd al-Jalajel mentioned with out offering a breakdown of their nationalities.
The temperature within the Saudi metropolis of Mecca and different close by holy websites hovered round 50 levels Celsius (122 levels Fahrenheit) by Tuesday’s remaining pilgrimage day.
“The unregistered pilgrims walked for long distances under the sun without shelter and rest. A number of them were elderly and some others had chronic diseases,” al-Jalajel instructed the Saudi state tv al-Ekhbariya.
The official mentioned the lifeless had no identification playing cards, a matter that required time to determine them and speak to their households.
Several Arab governments mentioned a lot of the pilgrims who died in Saudi Arabia, Islam’s birthplace, weren’t registered and had traveled on vacationer visas, not the required Hajj visas, which made it tougher to search out them or decide their precise numbers.
Unregistered pilgrims normally don’t have any entry to lodging and transportation companies.
Some 1.8 million pilgrims took half on this 12 months’s Hajj. One of the 5 pillars of Islam, the Hajj is a compulsory obligation for all Muslims to finish as soon as in a lifetime if they’ve the monetary and bodily means to take action.
Source: www.dailysabah.com