107 people killed as crane crashes on to Mecca’s Grand Mosque
Saudi Arabia’s civil defence authority says more than 200 injured in preparations for annual hajj pilgrimage
At least 107 people were killed and 238 more were injured when a
crane collapsed on to the Grand Mosque during storms in the Muslim holy
city of Mecca on Friday, the Saudi Arabian government has said.
The director general of the country’s civil defence authority, Suleiman al-Amr, said high winds caused the disaster.
On its Twitter account, the authority said rescue teams had been sent
to the scene and offered its “sincere condolences” over the deaths, as
well as its prayers for the speedy recoveries of those injured.
Pictures
showed a large group of people lying on polished tiled flooring,
most of them near to a wall and surrounded by rubble and other debris.
One man appeared to be being wheeled out of the building on a
wheelchair. Bloodied people were being treated at the scene.
Mobile phone footage captures the moment a crane collapses onto the Grand Mosque in Mecca on Friday
Other images showed parts of a crane that crashed through the roof of a building.
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Abdel
Aziz Naqoor, who said he worked at the mosque, told Agence
France-Presse that he had seen 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 Ka’bah and broke the crane’s fall.
The UK Foreign Office said it was urgently investigating whether any
British citizens were caught up in the accident. “We are are aware of
the incident and are in close contact with the Saudi authorities,” a
spokeswoman said.
David Cameron tweeted: “My thoughts and prayers are with those who have lost loved ones at Mecca today.”
The governor of Mecca region, Prince Khaled al-Faisal, ordered an
investigation into the incident and was heading to the mosque, according
to the local government.
Muslims make their annual hajj pilgrimage later in September and
Saudi authorities go to great lengths to be prepared for the millions of
people who converge on Mecca. They have taken a series of safety
measures over the past decade aimed at preventing crowd crushes after
tragedies such as the stampede in 2006, which resulted in 350 deaths, a
building collapse in the same year which killed 76 and a stampede that
killed more than 200 people in 2004.
Officials limited numbers attending the hajj after a peak in 2013, in
which more than 3.1 million pilgrims arrived. Bottlenecks in which
crushes occurred along the pilgrimage route were widened and religious
authorities decreed that it was not mandatory for pilgrims to touch
sacred spots.
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The
Grand Mosque, which houses the Ka’bah, the cube-shaped structure
towards which Muslims worldwide pray, has been surrounded by a number of
cranes. Reconstruction work has been going on to enlarge the mosque by
400,000 sq m (4.3m sq ft), allowing it to accommodate up to 2.2 million
people.
The work has continued for the past two years and was expected to be
largely completed before this year’s pilgrimage, which begins on 22
September.
Saudi authorities have lavished vast sums to improve Mecca’s
transport system in an effort to prevent more disasters. Security
services often surround 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.
According to a report on al-Jazeera television, the crane fell on the
east side of the mosque after a sandstorm and heavy rain. It said the
building’s doors were shut and people were locked inside. Its reporter
said there was “slight pandemonium” and that one person was killed in
the rush to get out.
The reporter said:
“Dozens of ambulances are heading to the site. The authorities closed
off the area shortly afterwards. This whole place is already a
construction site. What made it worse is that around 5.30pm there was
severe rain and it’s just gushing down the road. I am surrounded by
people who are grieving. The mood here is of sadness.”
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 Agence France-Presse.
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.
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.
The Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, whose country is home to
tens of millions of Muslims, said on Twitter: “My thoughts and prayers
are with the families of those who lost their lives in the crane crash
in Mecca. I wish the injured a quick recovery.”
The US secretary of state, John Kerry, expressed condolences to Saudi Arabia and “all Muslims around the world in the aftermath of this dreadful incident at one of Islam’s holiest sites”.
The Saudi Press Agency 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. In 2014 just over two million
people took part.
Steep hills and low-rise traditional buildings that once surrounded
the mosque have in recent years given way to shopping malls and luxury
hotels – among them the world’s third-tallest building, a giant clock
tower that is the centrepiece of the Abraj al-Bait complex. The Saudi
Binladin Group is leading the mosque expansion and also built the Abraj
al-Bait project. The Binladin family has been close to the ruling
al-Saud family for decades and oversees major building projects around
the country.
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