As the death toll from the yearly rituals, which were conducted in scorching heat, soared past 900, on Wednesday, friends and family searched for the travelers who had vanished from the Haj.
Family scoured facilities and pleaded digitally for information, fearing the worst after temperatures hit 51.8C in Mecca, Islam’s holiest town, on Monday.
About 1.8 million people from all over the globe, some old and infirm, took part in the days- long, generally outside pilgrimage, held this year during the oven- like Saudi summer.
According to an Egyptian minister, Egyptian deaths increased to “at least 600” from “over 300” the previous day, primarily as a result of the cruel heat. According to an AFP score of numbers released by various countries, that number brings the total reported dead to 922.
68 Indian immigrants died during the haj pilgrimage, according to a minister in Saudi Arabia. Some are caused by natural causes, and we had a large number of elderly travelers. And some are due to the weather conditions, that’s what we assume”, the envoy, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP.
In addition to Egypt, mortality have also been confirmed by Jordan, Indonesia, Iran, Senegal, Tunisia and Iraq’s automatic Kurdistan region, while in many cases officials have not specified the reason.
Saudi Arabia has not provided data on mortality, though it reported more than 2, 700 instances of “heat stress” on Sunday only. The country has spent billions of dollars on masses control and safety measures for those who take part in the yearly five-day trip, but the sheer volume of people makes it difficult to make sure their safety.
Images of the missing and data requests have been flooding social media platforms. Ghada Mahmoud Ahmed Dawood, an Iranian traveler who has been missing since Saturday, is among the people searching for information. One family companion from Saudi Arabia said,” The good news is that we did not find her on the list of the deceased until then, which gives us hope she is still alive.”
All Muslims who have the means must finish the pilgrimage, which is one of Islam’s five columns, at least once. The Islamic lunar calendar moves forward in the Gregorian calendar each month, and its timing is determined by that timeline. During the sweltering Saudi summers, rituals that were mostly outdoors have fallen for the past several decades. A Royal study published last month revealed that the region’s temperatures are rising by 0.4C each century. Even if the world’s efforts to mitigate the worst effects of climate change are successful, the Haj would still be held in temperatures that would be above the “extreme harm threshold” between 2047 and 2052, and between 2079 and 2086, according to a 2019 study by MIT experts.
Deaths are n’t uncommon at the Haj, which has drawn at times over 2 million citizens to Saudi Arabia. More than 200 travellers were reported dead last year. There have also been herds and outbreaks through the pilgrimage’s story. A 2015 frenzy in Mina during the pilgrimage killed over 2, 400 travellers, the deadliest incident to actually reach the journey, an AP matter showed. Saudi Arabia has not fully acknowledged the impact of the frenzy. A separate hoist crumble at Mecca’s Grand Mosque, which preceded the Mina crisis, killed 111 individuals. The next- deadliest affair at hajj was a 1990 panic that killed 1, 426 individuals.
