killed at least 2,121 pilgrims, a new Associated Press tally showed
Monday, after officials in the kingdom met to discuss the tragedy.
The toll keeps rising from the Sept. 24 disaster outside Mecca as
individual countries identify bodies and work to determine the
whereabouts of hundreds of pilgrims still missing. The official Saudi
toll of 769 people killed and 934 injured has not changed since
September 26, and officials have yet to address the discrepancy.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Naif bin Abdul Aziz, who is also the
kingdom's interior minister, oversaw a meeting late Sunday about the
disaster in Mina, according to the official Saudi Press Agency. The
agency's report did not mention any official response to the rising
death toll.
"The crown prince was reassured on the progress of the
investigations," the SPA report said. "He directed the committee's
members to continue their efforts to find the causes of the accident,
praying to Allah Almighty to accept the martyrs and wishing the
injured a speedy recovery."
King Salman ordered the investigation into the disaster, the deadliest
in the history of the annual pilgrimage. It came after a crane
collapse in Mecca earlier that month killed 111 worshippers, and the
twin disasters marred the first hajj to be overseen by the king since
he ascended to the throne at the start of this year.
The Saudi king holds the title of "Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques,"
and the monarchy's supervision of the hajj is a source of great
prestige in the Muslim world. Riyadh has rejected a suggestion by
Shiite power Iran, its main regional rival, to have an independent
body take over planning and administering the five-day hajj
pilgrimage, which is required of all able-bodied Muslims once in their
lifetimes.
Iran has repeatedly blamed the disaster on the Saudi royal family,
accusing it of mismanagement and of covering up the real death toll,
which Tehran says exceeds 4,700, without providing evidence.
"The lying and hypercritical bodies, which claim to (be promoting)
human rights, as well as the Western governments, which sometimes make
great fuss over the death of a single person, remained dead silent in
this incident in favor of their allied government," Iran's Supreme
Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Monday, according to a transcript
on his website.
"If they were sincere, these self-proclaimed advocates of human rights
should have demanded accountability, compensation, guarantee for
non-recurrence and punishment for the perpetrators of this
catastrophe."
Iran and Saudi Arabia are deeply divided on a host of regional issues
and back opposite sides in the wars in Syria and Yemen, where a
Saudi-led coalition has been at war with Iran-backed Shiite rebels,
known as Houthis, since March.
Saudi Arabia has meanwhile been targeted in gun and bomb attacks by an
affiliate of the extremist Islamic State group, which holds a third of
Iraq and Syria in its self-declared "caliphate." Like al-Qaida before
it, the IS group views the Saudi royal family as illegitimate because
of alleged corruption and its alliance with the United States.
The AP count of the dead from the Mina crush and stampede comes from
state media reports and officials' comments from 30 of the over 180
countries that sent citizens to the hajj.
Iran leads all the affected countries, saying it had 465 pilgrims
killed. Many of the dead also came from Africa. Nigeria said it lost
199 people, while Mali lost 198, Cameroon lost 76, Niger lost 72,
Senegal lost 61, and Ivory Coast and Benin both lost 52.
Others include Egypt with 182, Bangladesh with 137, Indonesia with
126, India with 116, Pakistan with 102, Ethiopia with 47, Chad with
43, Morocco with 36, Algeria with 33, Sudan with 30, Burkina Faso with
22, Tanzania with 20, Somalia with 10, Kenya with eight, Ghana and
Turkey with seven, Myanmar and Libya with six, China with four,
Afghanistan with two and Jordan and Malaysia with one.
The previous deadliest-ever incident at hajj was a 1990 stampede that
killed 1,426 people.
-Associated Press
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