hajj pilgrimage will go ahead despite a crane collapse
that killed 107 people at Mecca's Grand Mosque,
where crowds returned to pray a day after the
tragedy.
Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims had already
arrived in Mecca for the hajj, a must for all able-
bodied Muslims who can afford it, when the massive
red and white crane collapsed during rain and high
winds on Friday.
Parts of the Grand Mosque, one of Islam's holiest
sites, remained sealed off Saturday around the
toppled crane, which also injured around 200 people
when it fell into a courtyard.
But there was little mourning among pilgrims, who
snapped pictures of the wreckage and continued with
their prayers and rituals.
"I wish I had died in the accident, as it happened at a
holy hour and in a holy place," Egyptian pilgrim
Mohammed Ibrahim told AFP.
The accident occurred only about an hour before
evening mahgrib prayers on the Muslim weekly day
of prayer.
Om Salma, a Moroccan pilgrim, said "our phones
have not stopped ringing since yesterday with
relatives calling to check on us."
Indonesians and Indians were among those killed
when the crane collapsed, while the injured included
Malaysians, Egyptians and Iranians.
A Saudi official said the hajj, expected to start on
September 21, would proceed despite the tragedy.
"It definitely will not affect the hajj this season, and
the affected part will probably be fixed in a few days,"
said the official, who declined to be named.
An investigative committee has "immediately and
urgently" begun searching for the cause of the
collapse, the official Saudi Press Agency said.
The contractor has been directed to ensure the safety
of all other cranes at the site, it added.
The cranes poke into the air over the sprawling
mosque expansion taking place beneath the Mecca
Royal Clock Tower, the world's third-tallest building,
at 601 metres (1,972 feet).
For years, work has been underway on a 400,000
square metre (4.3 million square feet) expansion of
the Grand Mosque to allow it to accommodate up to
2.2 million people at once.
Abdel Aziz Naqoor, who said he works at the
mosque, told AFP he saw the massive construction
crane fall during 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 which broke the crane's fall and
surrounds the holy Kaaba.
The Kaaba is a massive cube-shaped structure at the
centre of the mosque towards which Muslims
worldwide pray.
A witness said the winds were so strong that they
shook his car and tossed billboards around.
– 'Act of God' –
Pictures of the incident on Twitter showed bloodied
bodies strewn across the courtyard, where part of
the crane came to rest atop an ornate, arched and
colonnaded section of the complex.
A video on YouTube showed people screaming and
rushing around following a loud crash.
Saudis and foreigners lined up in the street to give
blood in response to the tragedy.
Irfan al-Alawi, co-founder of the Mecca-based Islamic
Heritage Research Foundation, suggested that
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 Muslim Prophet Mohammed.
But an engineer for the Saudi Binladin Group, the
developer, told AFP the crane was installed in "an
extremely professional way" and there was no
technical problem.
"It was an act of God", he said.
Saudi Binladin Group belongs to the family of the late
Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Sheikh Ahmed al-Ghamdi, former head of Mecca's
religious police, told AFP the accident is a "test" from
God.
"We need to accept what happened," he said, calling
at the same time for a thorough investigation.
Condolences came in from around the world,
including from Arab leaders, as well as from Britain,
Canada, India and Nigeria.
This was not the first tragedy to strike Mecca
pilgrims, though the hajj has been nearly incident-
free in recent years.
In 2006, several hundred died in a stampede during
the Stoning of the Devil ritual in nearby Mina,
following a similar incident two years earlier.
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