Chanting and clad in white robes, 2 million pilgrims climbed Mount Arafat on Wednesday, leaving behind the traces of a fire that roared through their tent city, killing up to 300 fellow Muslims.
Calls of "At thy service O' Lord, at thy service," thundered through the valley as the pilgrims moved in a white wave up the mountain, where Islam's prophet Mohammed delivered his last sermon shortly before his death in 632.By ritual, every pilgrim must arrive at Arafat by midday to stand silently in prayer as a group. It is the climax of the hajj, or pilgrimage, which every Muslim who can afford it must perform at least once in a life-time.
The stand on Mount Arafat is a symbolic precursor of doomsday, when Muslims believe every human will rise from the grave and stand before God in white burial shrouds to be judged.
On Tuesday, a fire tore through the overcrowded encampment of canvas tents on the plain of Mina, where the pilgrims rest before ascending Arafat.
Ignited by exploding canisters of cooking gas and fanned by high winds, the blaze destroyed 70,000 tents and forced hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to spend the night without shelter on the plain outside Mecca, Islam's holiest city.
The official death toll from the fire is 217, but witnesses said they saw at least 300 bodies.
"More victims are dying in the hospitals so an accurate death toll is not yet possible," said a journalist at Mina who spoke on condition of anonymity.
More than 1,290 pilgrims were injured.
Muslims on Wednesday surrounded officials at the Bombay offices of the Central Hajj Committee, which arranges pilgrimages to the Saudi holy cities for most Indians. Their pleas for information were answered only by a brief fax posted on office walls from Afzal Amanullah, an Indian diplomat in Saudi Arabia.
"There appear to be some Indian victims. . . . The Indian deaths are in excess of 100," Amanullah wrote. "It is impossible to get any details at present."
Most of the other victims were believed to be Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, witnesses told The Associated Press. Some were trampled to death as pilgrims fled the fire.
"Every pilgrim is dressed in identical white robes, so it's been very hard to distinguish nationalities," Ahmad Lehri, director of hajj affairs at the Pakistani consulate in Jiddah, explained by phone from Mina.
The Saudi Interior Ministry said more than 1.1 million pilgrims had arrived in the kingdom for the hajj, joining nearly an equal number of Saudi worshipers.
In Mecca, worshipers scurried to finish their rituals Wednesday and headed for Arafat before the midday deadline.
Burly security guards in long white robes pushed back worshipers lunging to touch the Kaaba, a cubic stone structure that stands inside the massive Grant Mosque. Muslims believe the Kaaba, which is covered by a gold-embroidered black cloth, was built by Abraham as a house of God.
As thousands made their seven counter-clockwise rounds around the Kaaba, Qasim Basim Naqib, a 27-year-old student from Lebanon, clung to the black cloth with tears in his eyes.
"Forgive me O' Lord, forgive me for my sins. I surrender to thee and hope for mercy," he muttered.
Saudi Civil Defense guards, meanwhile, worked through the night to erect tents for the thousands of pilgrims stranded by fire. The pilgrims will return to Mina on Thursday, and stay there for several days to carry out symbolic "stoning of the devil" rituals.
Stunned pilgrims wandered the plain Wednesday amid the smoldering remains of tents, looking for relatives or friends who may have died. A cloud of smoke hung over the encampment.
King Fahd, the Saudi monarch, offered his condolences to the families of those killed in the fire. "I ask that God gives them patience to cope," he said. President Clinton also sent his condolences.
The hajj has been the scene of several recent tragedies, including the deaths of 1,400 people in a 1990 stampede.