Muslim pilgrims and rescuers gather around people who were crushed by overcrowding in Mina, Saudi Arabia during the annual hajj pilgrimage on Thursday, Sept. 24, 2015.
Every Muslim is supposed to make the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca sometime in their life.
And every year millions do. With so many people descending on the holy city in Saudi Arabia, there are huge logistical challenges.
And sometimes … horrific accidents.
That happened today in Mecca. More than 700 people were trampled to death in a stampede. And many more were injured. It's the deadliest tragedy at the hajj in more than 20 years.
And it happened as Muslims around the world mark the start of the Eid al-Adha holiday.
“I was able to get through several barriers of security as close as I could to the scene of the horrific stampede that took place,” says Aya Batrawy, an Associated Press reporter on the scene in Mina just outside Mecca. “There were still bodies on the ground more than 10 hours after the stampede took place which goes to show how catastrophic it was, how many bodies piled up and how frenetic the response has been by security and ambulance team. There were bodies piled all the way across the street for a block and ambulances trying to take the bodies, people who were conscious and unconscious still, out of the pile.”
Survivors of the stampede told Batrawy that during the stampede people lived or died depending on one inch of difference of where they stood; another said the Saudi government just wasn’t prepared for this kind of catastrophe, others expressed dismay that something must have gone terribly wrong with crowd management.
Saudi Arabia has experience dealing with these massive crowds of pilgrims every year and this year had arranged corridors for people to be able to walk towards certain areas such as the site today where pilgrims were carrying out a symbolic pelting of the devil, one of the last rites of the hajj. Batrawy says people going in opposite directions are supposed to stay on different corridors or roads. But apparently that didn’t happen as some crowds today converged on the same path, but it’s not yet known why that happened.
The challenge of maintaining public safety during the crowded religious event is enormous especially because there are so many different cultures coming together and different languages. But given that the Saudi government has been in charge of the hajj for decades some are saying it should have acquired the experience by now to handle crowd control. “I think people are questioning how this could happen in 2015,”sas Batrawy.
“Of course it’s a very significant and horrific accident,“ says Batrawy, but at the same time, most pilgrims are continuing their hajj rites because this is a once in a lifetime trip for many of the 2 million there in Mecca. “The mood is somber but pilgrims are carrying on,” says Batrawy, “many see it as a chance to pray for those who died.”