Extreme heat claims hundreds of lives during Hajj pilgrimage

Hundreds of people have died during this year’s hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia as worshippers were exposed to extremely high temperatures at the desert kingdom’s Islamic holy sites, officials said on Wednesday as people tried to collect the bodies of their loved ones.

Saudi Arabia has not commented on the number of people killed in the heat during the pilgrimage, which every able-bodied Muslim must perform once in a lifetime, or given any cause of death. However, hundreds of people had lined up outside the emergency complex in Mecca’s Al-Muaisem neighborhood seeking information about their missing family members.

A list circulating online suggests that at least 550 people died during the five-day hajj. A medical official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss information the government has not made public said the names listed appeared to be authentic. That medical official and another official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said they believed there were at least 600 bodies at the facility. The list did not specify the cause of death.

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Each year, the hajj attracts hundreds of thousands of pilgrims from low-income countries, “many of whom had little or no health care before the hajj,” according to an article in the April issue of the Journal of Infection and Public Health. Contagious diseases can spread among the gathered crowds, many of whom have saved their entire lives for their journey and may be elderly with underlying health conditions, the paper added.

However, the number of deaths this year suggests that there was something that caused the increase in deaths. Several countries, including Jordan and Tunisia, have already said some of their pilgrims died due to the heat that swept through the holy sites in Mecca.

On Monday, temperatures in Mecca and holy sites in and around the city reached 46 degrees Celsius, and onlookers saw some people faint as they attempted to carry out the symbolic stoning of the devil.

Temperatures in the Grand Mosque in Mecca reached 48 degrees Celsius on Monday, even though pilgrims had already left for Mina, authorities said.

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On Wednesday, an Egyptian man collapsed to the ground at the medical complex in Mecca when he heard his mother’s name among the dead. He cried for a while before taking out his cellphone, calling a travel agent and shouting: “He let her die!” The crowd tried to calm the man down.

Security at the complex appeared to be tight. An official read out the names of the dead and their nationalities, including people from Algeria, Egypt and India. Those who said they were related to the dead were allowed in to identify the bodies.

The AP could not independently confirm the cause of death of the bodies kept at the complex. Saudi officials did not respond to requests for further information.

Saudi Arabia has spent billions of dollars to control crowds and ensure the safety of participants in the annual five-day pilgrimage, but the sheer number of participants makes it difficult to ensure their safety.

Climate change could increase the risk even further. A 2019 study by experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that even if the world managed to mitigate the worst effects of climate change, the hajj from 2047 to 2052 and from 2079 to 2086 would take place in temperatures exceeding an “extreme danger threshold.”

Islam follows the lunar calendar, so Hajj occurs about 11 days earlier each year. In 2030, Hajj will occur in April, and in the next few years it will occur in winter when temperatures are milder.

A stampede in Mina during the hajj in 2015 killed more than 2,400 pilgrims, the worst incident ever to occur on the pilgrimage, according to an AP tally. Saudi Arabia has never released the exact number of victims of the stampede. Another crane collapse at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, which preceded the Mina disaster, killed 111 people.

The second deadliest incident during the Hajj was a stampede in 1990 that left 1,426 people dead.