Thousands die during Hajj this year: Who is to blame?

Nearly two million Muslims completed the Hajj pilgrimage this week.

However, extreme heat has been fatal for thousands who started the journey last Friday, to the Kaaba in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

According to the AFP, about 1,000 pilgrims died during the Hajj this year. About half of them are unregistered.

Thousands are also being treated for heatstroke as temperatures mounted to 49 degrees Celsius (120 degrees Fahrenheit) in Mecca.

Overcrowding at Mecca

To perform the Hajj, pilgrims must obtain official permission from Saudi Arabia to visit the nation. Saudi Arabia implements an annual quota system because there are more Muslims who wish to immigrate than there is room for.

In the past, overcrowding and overheating have been major issues, according to the Indian Express.

Of the 1,000, over half of the pilgrims who died were unregistered.

Approximately 658 Egyptian pilgrims died, an Arab ambassador has said.

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630 of them were pilgrims who had not registered.

About 90 of the dead, according to AFP sources, were Indian.

Dead pilgrims have also been reported from Senegal, Tunisia, Indonesia, Iran, Jordan, and Senegal.

Numerous pilgrims are said to be missing as well; images of the missing and calls for information are all over Facebook and other social media platforms.

On Wednesday at the medical complex in Mecca, an Egyptian man broke down when he heard his mother was among the dead. He cried for some time before grabbing his cellphone and calling their travel agent, according to The Associated Press.

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“He left her to die,” he shouted, referring to the agent. The crowd tried to calm him down.

Security appeared tight at the complex, with an official reading out names of the dead and the nationalities, which included people from Algeria, Egypt and India.

Those who said they were kin of the dead were allowed inside to identify the deceased.

Extreme heat making things worse

The number of dead this year suggests something caused the fatalities to swell.

Already, several countries have said some of their pilgrims died because of the heat that swept across the holy sites at Mecca, including Jordan and Tunisia, as per the report.

Khalid Bashir Bazaz, an Indian pilgrim, speaking near the Grand Mosque on Wednesday, he “saw a lot of people collapsing to the ground unconscious” during this year’s Hajj.

Temperatures on Tuesday reached 47 degrees Celsius (117 degrees Fahrenheit) in Mecca and the sacred sites in and around the city, according to the Saudi National Centre for Meteorology.

Some people fainted while trying to perform the symbolic stoning of the devil.

Many Egyptians said they lost track of their loved ones in the heat and the crowds.

Heat-related deaths during the haj have been recorded since the 1400s. Pilgrims’ vulnerability stems from exertion, exposure, and older age, as well as a simple lack of acclimatisation to the heat. According to Saudi officials last year, more than 2,000 people suffered from heat stress during that haj.

Climate change could make the risk even greater.

A 2021 study in the journal Environmental Research Letters found that if global temperatures rise by 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels, heat stroke risk for Hajj pilgrims will increase by five times, as per Reuters.

A 2019 study by experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that even if the world succeeds in mitigating the worst effects of climate change, the Hajj would be held in temperatures exceeding an “extreme danger threshold” from 2047 to 2052, and from 2079 to 2086.

Climate scientist Fahad Saeed says these deaths hint at future risks for millions of Hajj pilgrims.

“We need to prepare, we need to adapt, and we need to introduce the adaptation option as much as we can. While realising that it will compromise the centuries-old ritual, still we need to save people. But at the same time, we must take climate action to stop global warming at 1.5 degrees centigrade. At anything beyond that, we are putting those pilgrims at the risk of death.”

Saudi Arabia has spent billions of dollars on crowd control and safety measures for those attending the annual five-day pilgrimage, but the sheer number of participants makes ensuring their safety difficult.

In 2016, Saudi Arabia implemented a heat strategy with shaded areas, water points at every 500 metres, and improved healthcare.

Deaths during the Hajj

The Hajj’s timing is based on the lunar year, moving back 10 days each year.

While the Hajj is now moving towards winter, it will occur in the peak of summer in Saudi Arabia by the 2040s.

More than 1.83 million Muslims performed the Hajj in 2024, including more than 1.6 million from 22 countries, and around 222,000 Saudi citizens and residents, according to the Saudi Hajj authorities.

Deaths are not uncommon at the Hajj.

There have also been stampedes and epidemics through the pilgrimage’s history.

A 2015 stampede in Mina during the Hajj killed over 2,400 pilgrims, the deadliest incident to ever strike the pilgrimage, according to an AP count.

Saudi Arabia has never acknowledged the full toll of the stampede.

A separate crane collapse at Mecca’s Grand Mosque, which preceded the Mina disaster that same year, killed 111 people.

The second-deadliest incident at Hajj was a 1990 stampede that killed 1,426 people.

Each year, the Hajj draws hundreds of thousands of pilgrims from low-income nations, “many of whom have had little, if any, pre-Hajj health care,” according to an article in the April edition of the Journal of Infection and Public Health.

Communicable illnesses can spread among the gathered masses, many of whom save their entire lives for the pilgrimage and can be elderly with pre-existing health conditions, it said.

Still, pilgrims remain determined — for some, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime affair.

“Haj is the fifth pillar of Islam and it is a mandatory duty for every capable person. So you have to exert efforts and get tired. Haj is a difficult task, so you have to exert efforts and perform the rituals even in the conditions of heat and crowding. You use an umbrella, drink water and pour it onto your body to prevent dehydration. And the water sprinklers in the walkways help.”

With inputs from agencies