Incidents during the Hajj

There have been many serious incidents during the Hajj that have led to the loss of hundreds of lives. The Hajj is the Islamic pilgrimage to the city of Mecca. There are an estimated 1.3 billion Muslims living today and during the month of the Hajj, the city of Mecca must cope with as many as four million pilgrims.

Jet travel also makes Mecca and the Hajj more accessible to pilgrims from all over the world. As a consequence, the Hajj has become increasingly crowded. City officials are consequently required to control large crowds and provide food, shelter, and sanitation for millions. Unfortunately, they have not always been able to prevent disasters, which are hard to avoid with so many people. The worst of the incidents have happened during the ritual stoning of the devil.

Failures in crowd control

Sometimes the surging crowds, trekking from one station of the pilgrimage to the next, cause a stampede. Panic spreads, pilgrims jostle to avoid being trampled, and hundreds of deaths can result.

On July 2, 1990, a stampede inside a pedestrian tunnel (Al-Ma'aisim tunnel) leading out from Mecca towards Mina and the Plains of Arafat led to the deaths of 1,426 pilgrims.
On May 23, 1994, a stampede killed at least 270 pilgrims at the stoning of the Devil ritual.
On April 9, 1998, at least 118 pilgrims were trampled to death and 180 injured in an incident on Jamarat Bridge. ^*
On March 5, 2001, 35 pilgrims were trampled to death in a stampede during the stoning of the Devil ritual.
On February 11 2003, the stoning of the Devil ritual claimed 14 pilgrims' lives. ^*
On February 1, 2004, 251 pilgrims were killed and another 244 injured in a stampede during the stoning ritual in Mina. ^*

2006 stampede

On January 12, 2006, a stampede during the ritual stoning of the Devil on the last day of the Hajj in Mina killed at least 346 pilgrims and injured at least 289 more. The stoning ritual is the most dangerous part of the pilgrimage because the ritual can cause people to be crushed, particularly as they traverse the massive two-layer flyover-style Jamarat Bridge that affords access to the pillars.

The incident occurred shortly after 13:00 local time, when a passenger bus shed its load of travellers at the eastern access ramps to the Jamarat Bridge. This caused pilgrims to trip, rapidly resulting in a lethal crush. An estimated two million people were performing the ritual at the time.

This was the second fatal tragedy of the Islamic month of Dhu al-Hijjah in 2006. Earlier in the month the Al Ghaza Hotel had collapsed (see below).

Fires

In December 1975 an exploding gas cylinder caused a fire in a tent colony. 200 pilgrims were killed. ^*
On April 15, 1997 343 pilgrims were killed and 1,500 injured in a tent fire.

Protests and violence

On July 31, 1987 Iranian pilgrims rioted, causing the deaths of over 400 people.
On July 9, 1989 two bombs exploded, killing one pilgrim and wounding a further sixteen. Saudi authorities beheaded sixteen Kuwaiti Shiite Muslims for the bombings after originally suspecting Iranian terrorists.

Disease

Mingling of visitors from so many countries, some of which have poor health care systems still plagued by preventable infectious diseases, can lead to the spread of epidemics. If an outbreak were to occur on the road to Mecca, pilgrims could exacerbate the problem when they returned home and passed their infection on to others. This was more of a problem in the past. One such disease, which has prompted response from the Saudi government, is meningitis as it became a primary concern after an international outbreak following the Hajj in 1987. Due to post-Hajj outbreaks globally of certain types of meningitis in previous years, it is now a visa requirement to be immunised with the ACW135Y vaccine before arrival.

Al Ghaza Hotel collapse

A concrete multi-story building located in Mecca close to the Grand Mosque collapsed on January 5 2006. The building, the Al Ghaza Hotel, is said to have housed a restaurant, a convenience store, and a hostel. The hostel was reported to have been housing pilgrims to the 2006 Hajj. It is not clear how many pilgrims were in the hotel at the time of the collapse. As of latest reports, the death toll is seventy-six and the number of injured is sixty-four. ^*

Official responses

Critics say that the Saudi government should have done more to prevent such tragedies. The Saudi government insists that any such mass gatherings are inherently dangerous and difficult to handle, and that they have taken a number of steps to prevent problems.

One of the biggest steps, which is also controversial, is a new system of registrations, passports, and travel visas to control the flow of pilgrims. This system is designed to encourage and accommodate first-time visitors to Mecca, while imposing restrictions upon those who embark upon the trip multiple times. Pilgrims who have the means and desire to perform the Hajj several times have protested what they see as discrimination, but the Hajj Commission has stated that they see no alternative if further tragedies are to be prevented.

Following the 2004 stampede, Saudi authorities embarked on major construction work in and around the Jamarat Bridge area. Additional accessways, footbridges, and emergency exits were built, and the three cylindrical pillars were replaced with longer and taller oblong walls of concrete to enable more pilgrims simultaneous access to them without the jostling and fighting for position of recent years. The government has also announced a multi-million-dollar project to expand the bridge to five levels; the project is planned for completion in time for the 1427 AH (Dec. 2006 – Jan. 2007) Hajj. ^*

References

12 January 2006. "Hundreds killed in Hajj stampede" at BBC News
12 January 2006. "Hajj stampede kills hundreds" at CNN
"Jamarat Bridge Accidents at crowddynamics.com
2 February 2004. "Saudis review Hajj danger points" at BBC News
10 January 2004. Saudi-U.S. Relations Information Service
6 March 2001. "Lessons from Hajj deaths at BBC News

External link

Khomeini's Messengers in Mecca, political rivalries behind the 1987 bloodshed, by Martin Kramer

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