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Pilgrims die in bus crash between Mecca and Medina

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At least 19 Egyptians killed when their bus overturned in Saudi Arabia, between two cities considered holy to Muslims.

medina

by Al Jazeera

At least 19 Egyptians were killed when their bus overturned in Saudi Arabia, officials said.

Red Crescent spokesman Khaled al-Sahli said the crash took place early on Saturday on a highway linking the two Saudi holy cities of Medina and Mecca. At least 22 people were injured, he said.

An official with the Egyptian foreign ministry, Hisham al-Naqeeb, told the MENA news agency that the bus was carrying 44 Egyptians.

He said the bodies of the dead were transferred to different hospitals in the city of Medina.

Nawaf al-Mohammad, chief of the Medina traffic department, told Saudi online newspaper Sabq that the driver of the vehicle may have fallen asleep.

The pilgrims were on their way to Medina, about 400km from Mecca, according to the official.

The accident came a day after at least 14 Palestinian pilgrims en route to Mecca died in a bus crash in southern Jordannear the Saudi border.

Saudi Arabia suspends work of Mecca crane collapse firm

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Construction by Bin Laden Group halted after collapse left more than 100 pilgrims dead at Islam’s holiest site.

collapse Mecca Grand Mosque

by Al Jazeera

Saudi Arabia has suspended the Saudi Bin Laden Group from taking on new projects, just days after a deadly crane collapse in Mecca.

A statement by the Saudi government on Tuesday said the company’s operations had been stopped until a review of all their work had been completed.

The Saudi Bin Laden group is one of the region’s largest construction firms with contracts across the country.

Initial investigations by Saudi authorities suggested a “balance issue” in the crane and bad weather contributed to the tragedy that left at least 107 people dead and hundreds more injured at Islam’s holiest site immediately prior to the start of the Hajj.

Al Jazeera’s Omar al-Saleh, reporting from Mecca, said the move was “very significant”.

“The Mecca incident brought everything up to the surface, you can sense there were issues beneath the table,” Saleh said.

“There is an indication that the construction firm misused the manufacturers instructions, an indication perhaps of negligence.”

The Hajj, one of the largest religious gatherings in the world, has been prone to disasters in the past, mainly from stampedes as pilgrims rush to complete rituals and return home.

Hundreds of pilgrims died in such a crush in 2006.

Saudi authorities have since spent vast sums to expand the main Hajj sites and improve Mecca’s transport system, in an effort to prevent more disasters.

Two Indians among 107 killed in crane collapse at Mecca Grand Mosque

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collapse Mecca Grand Mosque

Riyadh: At least 107 people died when a massive construction crane crashed into Mecca’s Grand Mosque, with scores more injured, Saudi authorities said, days before the annual hajj pilgrimage.

The civil defence agency said on Twitter that emergency teams were sent to the scene after a “crane fell at the Grand Mosque,” one of Islam’s most revered sites.

That came about an hour after it tweeted that Mecca was “witnessing medium to heavy rains,” and pictures on social media showed lightning.

Ahmed bin Mohammad al-Mansoori, spokesman for the two holy mosques, was quoted by the official Saudi Press Agency as saying part of a crane collapsed at 5:10 pm (1410 GMT) “as a result of strong winds and heavy rains.”

Abdel Aziz Naqoor, who said he works at the mosque, told AFP he saw the crane fall after being hit by the storm.

“If it weren’t for Al-Tawaf bridge the injuries and deaths would have been worse,” he said, referring to a covered walkway that surrounds the holy Kaaba, which broke the crane’s fall.

The Kaaba is a massive cube-shaped structure at the centre of the mosque towards which Muslims worldwide pray and which has a major role in the hajj.

Pictures of the incident on Twitter showed bloodied bodies strewn across a courtyard where the top part of the crane, which appeared to have bent or snapped, had crashed into the building.

A video on YouTube showed people screaming and rushing around right after a massive crash was heard and as fog engulfed the city.

The incident occurred as hundreds of thousands of Muslims from all over the world gather for the annual hajj pilgrimage expected to begin on September 21.

The Grand Mosque is usually at its most crowded on Fridays, the Muslim weekly day of prayer.

Many faithful would have been gathered there ahead of evening maghrib prayers, which occurred about an hour after the tragedy.

Two Indians killed

The Ministry of External Affairs said that there were two Indians among the 107 people killed in the collapse. Around 15 Indian nationals were injured and were being treated in hospitals, said the statement posted on Twitter.

Pleas to donate blood

The governor of Mecca region, Prince Khaled al-Faisal, has ordered an investigation into the incident and was heading to the mosque, the official @makkahregion account on Twitter said.

Irfan al-Alawi, co-founder of the Mecca-based Islamic Heritage Research Foundation, compared the carnage to that caused by a bomb.

He suggested authorities were negligent by having a series of cranes overlooking the mosque.

“They do not care about the heritage, and they do not care about health and safety,” he told AFP.

Alawi is an outspoken critic of redevelopment at the holy sites, which he says is wiping away tangible links to the Prophet Mohammed.

Online activists created a hashtag on Twitter urging Mecca residents to donate blood at hospitals in the area.

No details were immediately available on the nationalities of the victims.

Iran’s official IRNA news agency, quoting the head of the Hajj Organisation, said 15 Iranian pilgrims were among those injured.

Most of them were treated as outpatients, Saeid Ohadi said.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose country is home to tens of millions of Muslims, took to Twitter to express his sorrow over the incident.

“My thoughts & prayers are with the families of those who lost their lives in the crane crash in Mecca. I wish the injured a quick recovery” he said on his @narendramodi account.

Britain’s David Cameron also used the micro-blogging site to say: “My thoughts and prayers are with those who have lost loved ones at #mecca today”.

A massive project is under way to expand the area of the mosque by 400,000 square metres (4.3 million square feet), allowing it to accommodate up to 2.2 million people at once.

Though marred in the past by deadly incidents including floods, stampedes and fires, the hajj has become nearly incident-free in recent years because of multi-billion dollar investments.

These have included transport networks and other infrastructure to facilitate movement of the crowds.

SPA said that almost 800,000 pilgrims had arrived by Friday for the hajj, which all able-bodied Muslims are expected to perform if they have the means to do so.

Last year, just over two million people took part.

(AFP)

Saudi crane collapse kills 107 in Mecca Grand Mosque

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Accident which also injured more than 230 people, just weeks before Hajj pilgrimage, blamed on violent thunderstorms.

Saudi crane collapse

by Al Jazeera

At least 107 people have been killed after a crane toppled over at Mecca’s Grand Mosque, less than two weeks before Islam’s annual Hajj pilgrimage.

In addition to the deaths, 238 people were wounded in Friday’s disaster, according to Saudi Arabia’s Civil Defence Authority.

The Saudi Press Agency quoted a spokesperson for the two holy mosques as saying that the crane was brought down by strong wind and heavy rain.

Pictures circulating on social media showed pilgrims in bloodied robes and debris from a part of the crane that appeared to have crashed through a ceiling.

Other pictures showed queues of Saudi men volunteering to donate blood for the injured. “All those who were wounded and the dead have been taken to hospital. There are no casualties left at the location,” General Suleiman al-Amr, director-general of the Civil Defence Authority, told Al Ikhbariya television. He said strong wind and rains had uprooted trees and rocked cranes in the area. “The crane collapsed near Al-Salam gate on the upper side of Al-Masaa area, and that caused the collapse of a small part of Al-Masaa and another section of Al-Mataf, the bridge area around the holy Kaaba,” Amr told Saudi state TV.

Official statement

A statement by a spokesperson for the administration of the mosques in Mecca and Medina said the crane toppled in the part of the Grand Mosque where worshippers circle the Kaaba – the black-clad cube towards which the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims face to pray. Al Jazeera’s Hasan Patel, reporting from Mecca, said witnesses told him that the crane fell on the third floor of the Grand Mosque at around 5.30pm on Friday.

He said the mosque was packed even though the incident happened before the 6.30pm prayer.

“Dozens of ambulances headed to the site. The authorities closed off the area shortly afterwards,” he said. “This whole place is already a giant construction site. What made it worse is that around 5.30pm there was severe rain and it was just gushing down the road. “I am surrounded by people who are grieving. The mood here is of sadness.” Saudi authorities go to great lengths to prepare for the millions of Muslims who converge on Mecca to perform the sacred pilgrimage. Last year, they reduced the numbers permitted to make the Hajj pilgrimage on safety grounds because of construction work to enlarge the Grand Mosque.

Prone to disasters

The Hajj, one of the largest religious gatherings in the world, has been prone to disasters in the past, mainly from stampedes as pilgrims rush to complete rituals and return home. Hundreds of pilgrims died in such a crush in 2006. Saudi authorities have since spent vast sums to expand the main Hajj sites and improve Mecca’s transport system, in an effort to prevent more disasters.

Security services often ring Islam’s sacred city with checkpoints and other measures to prevent people arriving for the pilgrimage without authorisation.

Those procedures, aimed at reducing crowd pressure which can lead to stampedes, fires and other hazards, have been intensified in recent years as security threats grow throughout the Middle East.

Richard Angwin, Al Jazeera’s senior weather presenter, said the autumn period is when half of Mecca’s thunderstorms occur, so “it was no great surprise that there were thunderstorms in the area”.

“The area of low pressure which brought sandstorms across the Levant region moved further south, allowing hot, moist air to develop into thunderstorms along the mountains bordering the Red Sea, and some of those drifted northwards across Mecca,” he said.

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