The death toll during the Hajj season rose to 1,300 amid extremely high temperatures

More than 1,300 people died during this year’s Hajj season in Saudi Arabia as believers They faced extremely high temperatures in Islamic holy sites The Saudi authorities announced on Sunday.

Saudi Health Minister Fahd bin Abdul Rahman Al-Jalajel said that 83% of the 1,301 deaths were from unauthorized pilgrims who walked long distances in high temperatures to perform Hajj rituals in and around the holy city of Mecca.

The minister said in an interview with state television that 95 pilgrims were receiving treatment in hospitals, and some of them were flown for treatment in the capital, Riyadh. He said that the identification process was delayed because there were no identity documents with many of the dead pilgrims.

Among the dead were more than 660 Egyptians. All but 31 were unauthorized pilgrims, according to officials in Cairo. Egyptian authorities said that Egypt has canceled the licenses of 16 travel agencies that helped unauthorized pilgrims travel to Saudi Arabia.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief reporters, said most of the dead were reported at the emergency complex in Mecca’s Al-Muaisem district. Egypt sent More than 50,000 pilgrims are authorized to travel to Saudi Arabia this year

Saudi authorities have taken strict measures against unauthorized pilgrims, expelling tens of thousands of people. But many, most of them Egyptians, were able to reach the holy sites in and around Mecca, some on foot. Unlike authorized pilgrims, they had no hotels to return to to escape the scorching heat.

The Egyptian government said in a statement on Saturday that the 16 travel agencies failed to provide adequate services to pilgrims. It said that these agencies illegally facilitated the travel of pilgrims to Saudi Arabia using visas that do not allow their holders to travel to Mecca.

The government also said that company officials had been referred to the public prosecutor for investigation.

According to the state-owned Al-Ahram newspaper, some travel agencies and Hajj tour operators sold Saudi tourist visas to Egyptian pilgrims, in violation of Saudi regulations that require visas exclusively for pilgrims. The newspaper said that these agencies left the pilgrims in limbo in Mecca and the holy sites in light of the intense heat.

The dead also included 165 pilgrims from Indonesia, 98 from India, and dozens more from Jordan, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria and Malaysia, according to an Associated Press tally. The deaths of US citizens were also reported.

The Associated Press was unable to independently confirm the causes of death, but some countries such as Jordan and Tunisia blamed high temperatures. Associated Press journalists saw pilgrims losing consciousness due to the intense heat, especially on the second and third days of the Hajj. Some vomited and collapsed.

Historically, deaths are not uncommon during the Hajj season, which has at times seen more than two million people travel to Saudi Arabia for the five-day Hajj. The history of Hajj also witnessed stampedes and deadly epidemics.

But this year’s toll was unusually high, indicating exceptional circumstances.

In 2015, the stampede in Mina killed more than 2,400 pilgrims, the deadliest incident ever to hit the Hajj, according to an Associated Press tally. Saudi Arabia has never acknowledged the full number of the stampede. The collapse of a separate crane in the Grand Mosque in Mecca earlier the same year killed 111 people.

The second deadliest accident during the Hajj season was the stampede that occurred in 1990 and led to the deaths of 1,426 people.

During this year’s Hajj, daily high temperatures ranged between 46 degrees Celsius (117 degrees Fahrenheit) and 49 degrees Celsius (120 degrees Fahrenheit) in Mecca and the holy sites in and around Medina, according to the Saudi National Meteorological Center. Some people have fainted while trying to symbolically perform the stoning of Satan.

The Hajj, one of the five pillars of Islam, is one of the largest religious gatherings in the world. More than 1.83 million Muslims performed the Hajj in 2024, including more than 1.6 million from 22 countries, and about 222,000 Saudi citizens and residents, according to Saudi Hajj authorities.

Saudi Arabia has spent billions of dollars on crowd control and safety measures for those attending the annual five-day Hajj, but the sheer number of participants makes it difficult to ensure their safety.

Climate change can increase risks. A 2019 study by experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that even if the world succeeds in mitigating the worst effects of climate change, the Hajj will be held at temperatures exceeding the “extreme danger threshold” from 2047 to 2052, and from 2079 to 2052. 2086 .

Islam follows the lunar calendar, so the Hajj comes approximately 11 days earlier each year. By 2029, the Hajj will occur in April, and after several years it will fall in winter, when temperatures are more moderate.