A fire swept across a pilgrims' tent encampment outside Mecca Tuesday as 2 million Muslims gathered for one of Islam's most sacred rituals. Witnesses said at least 300 people died.
The witnesses said the dead were mostly Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. Ambulances, their sirens blaring, rushed scores of injured to hospitals.Witnesses said they saw hundreds of bodies. Reporters working for a local Saudi newspaper said at least 300 people died, most of them trampled in the panic caused by the fire.
The fire broke out on the arid plains of Mina, outside Mecca, as Muslims gathered for the hajj, or pilgrimage, were beginning to move to Mount Arafat.
There, they will stand together in prayer at dawn Wednesday. The gathering on Mount Arafat, where the Prophet Mohammed delivered his last sermon in the seventh century, is the climax of the hajj.
The hajj has been the scene of several recent tragedies, including the deaths of 1,400 people in a 1990 stampede.
Arif Kamal, Pakistan's consul-general based in Jiddah, said 25 bodies had been found, two of them Pakistanis. Witnesses said they had seen at least 50 dead.
"The nationalities of the rest has not yet been determined," Kamal said. He said that 30,000 Pakistani tents had burned.
Witnesses said helicopters were brought in to aid firefighters on the ground in fighting the blaze, where 104-degree heat was coupled with high winds that fanned the flames. The fire was contained after several hours.
A second fire was reported in Iranian encampments on Mount Arafat, but it was not known if there were casualties. The Iranian news agency said firefighters were battling the blaze.
Egypt's Middle East News Agency said witnesses at Mina reported hearing explosions of gas cylinders, which are used by the pilgrims for cooking, and suggested this could have been the cause of the fire.