14 Trampled to Death at Hajj

Fourteen Muslim pilgrims were trampled to death today in Saudi Arabia while performing a stone-throwing ritual during the Hajj.

The ritual involves large crowds of people throwing pebbles at three stone pillars, commemorating the place where Muslims believe the devil tempted Abraham. The official Saudi Press Agency reported that some pilgrims fell and were killed by the crush of people around them.

As one group of pilgrims finished their ritual stoning and left the site, they met up with another group, swelling the crowd to dangerous proportions, the agency quoted Hajj security director Brig Abdel Aziz bin Mohammed bin Said, as saying.

The deaths occurred about 10:30am local time (0730 GMT) in a market area in Mina, about 5km from Mecca. Three Indians, four Pakistanis, two Egyptians, an Iranian and a Yemeni were among the dead. The rest had not yet been identified.

The number of injured was not released, but two people who were moderately injured remained hospitalised today, the news agency reported.

Every year about 2 million Muslims from around the world come to Saudi Arabia to perform the Hajj, one of the five pillars of the Islamic faith. Difficulties in controlling the crowd has lead to deaths in the past, and the site in Mina has been the source of dangerous bottlenecks in the past. In 2001, 35 people died in a stampede during the devil-stoning ritual. In 1998, 180 died performing the same ritual.