Islam's hajj pilgrimage will take place despite a crane
collapse that killed 107 people at Mecca's Grand
Mosque, Saudi authorities said Saturday as crowds
returned to pray a day after the tragedy.
Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims had already
arrived in Mecca for the annual hajj when the
massive red and white crane toppled over during a
Friday thunderstorm.
Parts of the Grand Mosque, one of Islam's holiest
sites, remained sealed off on Saturday around the
wreckage of the crane, which also injured around 200
people when it crashed 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, and the injured included
Malaysians, Egyptians and Iranians.
"Suddenly, I heard thunder and then we heard a very
loud noise. That was the sound of the crane falling,"
said Mohammed, a Moroccan pilgrim.
Another visitor, Ahmed from Egypt, said he and those
around him were "very scared, hysterical even".
A Saudi official said the hajj, expected to start on
September 21, would go ahead despite the tragedy.
– Enquiry has begun –
"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.
The pilgrimage is a must for all able-bodied Muslims
who can afford it.
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 soar skywards over a sprawling mosque
expansion taking place beneath the Mecca Royal
Clock Tower, the world's third tallest building.
For years, work has been under way 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 that the casualty toll would have
been higher had a covered walkway which surrounds
the holy Kaaba not broken the crane's fall.
The Kaaba is the huge cube-shaped structure at the
centre of the mosque towards which Muslims
worldwide pray.
"We saw people dying before our eyes", the Arab
News quoted Sheikh Abdul Raheem as saying.
Pictures of the incident on Twitter showed bloodied
bodies strewn across the courtyard, where part of
the crane had landed atop an ornate, arched and
colonnaded section of the complex.
A video on YouTube showed people screaming and
rushing around following a loud crash.
– 'Act of God' –
Saudis and foreigners lined up to donate blood in
response to the tragedy.
Irfan al-Alawi, co-founder of the Mecca-based Islamic
Heritage Research Foundation, suggested that the
authorities had been 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
Muslim holy sites, which he says is wiping away
tangible links to the Prophet Mohammed.
But an engineer for the Saudi Binladin Group, the
developer, told AFP the crane had been installed in
"an extremely professional way" and that there had
been 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 was a "test"
from God.
"We need to accept what happened," he said, at the
same time calling for a thorough investigation.
Condolences came in from around the world,
including from Arab leaders, as well as from Britain,
Canada, India and Nigeria.
It was not the first tragedy to strike Mecca pilgrims,
although the hajj has been practically incident-free in
recent years.
In 2006, several hundred people 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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