Faithful return to pray after Mecca mosque tragedy
18:34 12/09/2015
Mecca - Saudi authorities said on Saturday that crowds
had returned to pray at Mecca's Grand Mosque, where
107 people died on Friday when a crane collapsed.
Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims had already arrived in
Mecca for the hajj, a must for all able-bodied Muslims
who can afford it, when the massive red and white crane
collapsed during rain and high winds.
Parts of the Grand Mosque, one of Islam's holiest sites,
remained sealed off on Saturday around the toppled
crane, which also injured around 200 people when it fell
into a courtyard.
But there was little mourning among pilgrims, who
snapped pictures of the wreckage and continued with
their prayers and rituals.
"I wish I had died in the accident, as it happened at a
holy hour and in a holy place," Egyptian pilgrim
Mohammed Ibrahim told AFP.
The accident occurred only about an hour before
evening mahgrib prayers on the Muslim weekly day of
prayer.
Om Salma, a Moroccan pilgrim, said "our phones have
not stopped ringing since yesterday (Friday) with
relatives calling to check on us".
Indonesians and Indians were among those killed when
the crane collapsed, while the injured included
Malaysians, Egyptians and Iranians.
A Saudi official said the hajj, expected to start on
September 21, would proceed despite the tragedy.
"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.
An investigative committee has "immediately and
urgently" begun searching for the cause of the collapse,
the official Saudi Press Agency said.
Also read: Several pilgrims killed as crane collapses on
pilgrims in Mecca
The contractor has been directed to ensure the safety of
all other cranes at the site, it added.
The cranes poke into the air over the sprawling mosque
expansion taking place beneath the Mecca Royal Clock
Tower, the world's third-tallest building, at 601m.
For years, work has been underway on a 400 000m²
expansion of the Grand Mosque to allow it to
accommodate up to 2.2 million people at once.
Abdel Aziz Naqoor, who said he works at the mosque,
told AFP he saw the massive construction crane fall
during 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 which broke the crane's fall and surrounds the
holy Kaaba.
The Kaaba is a massive cube-shaped structure at the
centre of the mosque towards which Muslims worldwide
pray.
A witness said the winds were so strong that they shook
his car and tossed billboards around.
'Act of God'
Pictures of the incident on Twitter showed bloodied
bodies strewn across the courtyard, where part of the
crane came to rest atop an ornate, arched and
colonnaded section of the complex.
A video on YouTube showed people screaming and
rushing around following a loud crash.
Saudis and foreigners lined up in the street to give
blood in response to the tragedy.
Irfan al-Alawi, co-founder of the Mecca-based Islamic
Heritage Research Foundation, suggested that
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 AFP.
Alawi is an outspoken critic of redevelopment at the
holy sites, which he says is wiping away tangible links
to the Muslim Prophet Muhammad.
But an engineer for the Saudi Binladin Group, the
developer, told AFP the crane was installed in "an
extremely professional way" and there was no technical
problem.
"It was an act of God," he said.
Saudi Binladin Group belongs to the family of the late
al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Sheikh Ahmed al-Ghamdi, former head of Mecca's
religious police, told AFP the accident is a "test" from
God.
"We need to accept what happened," he said, calling at
the same time for a thorough investigation.
Condolences came in from around the world, including
from Arab leaders, as well as from Britain, Canada, India
and Nigeria.
This was not the first tragedy to strike Mecca pilgrims,
though the hajj has been nearly incident-free in recent
years.
In 2006, several hundred died in a stampede during the
Stoning of the Devil ritual in nearby Mina, following a
similar incident two years earlier.
- AFP
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