Hundreds killed as Haj pilgrims rush to stone the devil

At least 349 people were crushed to death and hundreds more were injured yesterday during the final day of the Haj pilgrimage at Mecca in the worst tragedy to hit the annual Muslim rite in Saudi Arabia for 16 years.

The pilgrims were crushed at the eastern end of the Jamarat Bridge as they tried to perform the ritual stoning of Satan.

"It was like the road of death there," one said. After the crowds had dispersed, witnesses spoke of scores of bodies lying covered with white shrouds. Most of the dead were said to be Muslim pilgrims of south and south-east Asian origin.

"I saw people moving and suddenly I heard crying, shouting, wailing," said Abdullah Pulig, an Indian street cleaner who had travelled to Saudi Arabia for the pilgrimage. "I looked around and people were piling on each other. They started pulling dead people from the crowd."

During the ritual stoning of the devil, pilgrims crowd to the narrow end of the Jamarat Bridge at Mena, just outside Mecca, to hurl stones at three pillars representing Satan. "The people who died were trying to get on to the bridge to do their stoning. But a wave of people came from the other direction trying to get off the bridge. That's when people died," said Amr Gad, an Egyptian pilgrim.

The Saudi Interior Ministry said: "It was the result of a large number of personal belongings being dropped and because large numbers of pilgrims insisted on doing the stoning in the afternoon."

The Haj attracts some of the largest crowds in the history of mankind - overcrowding has long been a severe problem. It is compounded by the fact that many pilgrims try to carry their belongings with them all the time - and get crushed when they bend to pick up those they have dropped.

In modern times the pilgrimage has been beset with tragedy. A fire in a tent camp killed 343 people in 1997. And in 1990, at least 1,426 people died in a stampede in a tunnel, most of them from Indonesia and Turkey. The Haj is a duty which every able-bodied Muslim must complete at least once in his lifetime. It is a source of great pride to the Saudi royal family that they are the guardians of Mecca, Islam's holiest city and the site of the pilgrimage.

But the Saudi authorities have struggled to cope with the vast crowds each year. In the Eighties, it was political violence that cast its shadow over the Haj, with militants taking over the Grand Mosque in Mecca, bombings, anti-Western protests and strife between Sunni and Shia pilgrims.

In recent years, the sheer number of people attending has been the problem, and year after year the bottleneck at the Jamarat Bridge has been a scene of disaster. Only two years ago, at least 251 people died in a stampede at the bridge. In 1998, at least 119 people died there. In 1994, at least 270 died.

This year, the Saudis enlarged the pillars that represent Satan to make them easier for pilgrims to hit. In previous years, stampedes have been caused by pilgrims jostling each other to get a good aim.