Hundreds killed in stampede at pilgrimage

Attempts to prevent stampede
Officials also recently widened the bridge, built extra ramps and increased the time pilgrims can carry out the rite — which on the second and final days traditionally takes place from midday until sunset.

Shiite Muslim clerics have issued religious edicts allowing pilgrims to start the ritual in the morning, and many Shiites from Iraq, Iran, Bahrain, Lebanon and Pakistan took advantage to go early in the day.

“This is much better. We are now done with the stoning before the crowd gets larger,” an Iranian pilgrim, Azghar Meshadi, said hours before the stampede.

But Saudi Arabia’s Sunni Muslim clerics, who follow the fundamentalist Wahhabi interpretation of Islam, encouraged pilgrims to stick to the midday rule.

Troops patrolling area
About 60,000 Saudi troops have patrolled the Mina plain since the stoning ritual began Tuesday, intending to ensure a smooth flow of pilgrims. Helicopters fly overhead, and authorities monitor the pilgrims from a control room through closed-circuit television.

But often the police appeared overwhelmed, unable to manage the crowds — a task complicated by peddlers selling food and souvenirs to the pilgrims and jamming up traffic. In theory, two of the ramps leading up to the pillars are for entry and two for exit, but pilgrims often ignore the rules and go up and down wherever they wish.

Signs giving directions to pilgrims — many of whom are at the site for the first time — are few.

The stoning ritual is one of the last events of the hajj pilgrimage to Islam’s holiest sites, which able-bodied Muslims with the financial means are required by their faith to do at least once.

Many pilgrims had already finished the stoning ritual Thursday and had gone back to Mecca to carry out a farewell circuit around the Kaaba, the black stone cube that Muslims face when they do their daily prayers.

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