Desperate Searches Continue As Hajj Death Toll Climbs 900

Friends and family members were desperately searching for missing Hajj pilgrims as the death toll from the annual rituals, conducted in searing heat in Saudi Arabia, has surged past 900.

Relatives were scouring hospitals and pleading online for news, fearing the worst after temperatures soared to 51.8 degrees Celsius (125 Fahrenheit) in Mecca, Islam’s holiest city, on Monday.

Approximately 1.8 million people from around the globe, many of them elderly and infirm, participated in the days-long, predominantly outdoor pilgrimage, which coincided with the intense Saudi summer this year.

An Arab diplomat revealed to AFP that the number of deaths among Egyptians alone had increased to “at least 600” from more than 300 the previous day, primarily due to the extreme heat. This figure brings the total reported deaths to 922, according to an AFP tally based on figures released by various countries.

The diplomat added that Egyptian officials in Saudi Arabia had received “1,400 reports of missing pilgrims,” including the 600 deceased.

One of the missing pilgrims is Mabrouka bint Salem Shushana from Tunisia, in her early 70s. She has been missing since Saturday’s climax of the pilgrimage at Mount Arafat, her husband Mohammed told AFP on Wednesday. Due to her unregistered status and lack of an official hajj permit, she was unable to access air-conditioned facilities. “She’s an old lady. She was tired. She was feeling so hot, and she had no place to sleep,” he said. “I looked for her in all the hospitals. Until now I don’t have a clue.”

Social media networks like Facebook have been inundated with pictures of the missing pilgrims and requests for information about them. Family and friends of Ghada Mahmoud Ahmed Dawood, an Egyptian pilgrim unaccounted for since Saturday, are among those seeking news. “I received a call from her daughter in Egypt begging me to put any post on Facebook that can help track her or find her,” said a family friend based in Saudi Arabia, who requested anonymity to avoid angering Saudi authorities. “The good news is that until now we did not find her on the list of the dead people, which gives us hope she is still alive.”

Hajj, one of the five pillars of Islam, is mandatory for all Muslims with the means to complete it at least once in their lifetime. Its timing is based on the Islamic lunar calendar, causing it to shift forward each year in the Gregorian calendar. Recently, the mainly outdoor rituals have coincided with the sweltering Saudi summer.

A recent Saudi study indicated that temperatures in the region are rising by 0.4 degrees Celsius (0.72 degrees Fahrenheit) each decade. Fatalities have been reported in Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia, Iran, Senegal, Tunisia, and Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, though many authorities have not specified the causes.

A second Arab diplomat informed AFP that Jordanian officials were searching for 20 missing pilgrims, though 80 others initially reported missing were located in hospitals. An Asian diplomat reported “around 68 dead” from India, with others missing. “Some (died) because of natural causes and we had many old-age pilgrims. And some are due to the weather conditions, that’s what we assume,” he said.

Saudi Arabia has not provided official information on fatalities, although it reported over 2,700 cases of “heat exhaustion” on Sunday alone. Last year, more than 200 pilgrims, mostly from Indonesia, were reported dead.

The cost of official permits forces tens of thousands of pilgrims to perform the hajj through irregular channels each year. This has become easier since 2019, with Saudi Arabia’s introduction of a general tourism visa, according to Umer Karim, an expert on Saudi politics at the University of Birmingham. “For these tourist visa guys, it’s like being on the migrant route without any idea of what to expect,” he said.

Many of the deceased Egyptians were unregistered, according to an Arab diplomat. Even pilgrims with official permits can be at risk, such as Houria Ahmad Abdallah Sharif, a 70-year-old Egyptian pilgrim who has been missing since Saturday. After praying on Mount Arafat, she went to a public bathroom to clean her abaya and never returned. “We’ve searched for her from door to door and we have not found her until now,” said a friend, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We know many who are still searching for their family members and relatives and they are not finding them, or if they are finding them they are finding them dead,” the friend added.