Hajj pilgrimage to go ahead despite tragedy at Mecca’s Grand Mosque 

This year’s hajj pilgrimage will go ahead despite a crane collapse that killed more than 100 people at Mecca’s Grand Mosque, a Saudi Arabian official said.
“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. “Hajj will go on, for sure.”
An investigation has begun following the accident on Friday in the Muslim holy city that killed at least 107 people and injured 238.
The head of Saudi’s civil defence authority, Suleiman al-Amr, said high winds during a storm 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.
Prince Khaled al-Faisal, governor of the Mecca region, has ordered an investigation into the incident and was heading to the mosque.
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 in a wheelchair. Bloodied people were being treated at the scene.

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Mobile phone footage captures the moment a crane collapses onto the Grand Mosque in Mecca on Friday

Other images showed parts of the 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.”
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 metres (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 2 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.