how the hajj turned into a tragedy due to the high heat

More than 1,000 people have died or are still missing during this major annual Muslim pilgrimage, most because of the heatwave.

Temperatures reached up to 51.8 degrees Celsius. The hajj, a major annual Muslim pilgrimage which took place in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, and other surrounding sites, from Friday June 14 to Wednesday June 19, turned into a tragedy due to the heatwave.

Hundreds of people have died, although it remains difficult to determine the exact number of deaths. Saudi Arabia has not yet given any official results. But according to an Arab diplomat, the Egyptian death toll at the hajj rose to 658 on Thursday. “All deaths [nouvellement annoncés] are due to heat”, he said on Wednesday, adding that the total figure came from the morgue of a hospital in the al-Muaisem district of Mecca.

In addition, Arab diplomats reported the deaths of 60 Jordanians. Deaths have also been confirmed in Indonesia, Iran, Senegal, Tunisia and Iraqi Kurdistan. An Asian diplomat said 68 Indian pilgrims lost their lives. According to AFP, which establishes a count based on data provided by different countries, the total number of deaths exceeded 1,000 late Thursday morning.

The authorities of Mecca, considered the holiest city in Islam, had advised the faithful to use parasols or umbrellas, to drink a lot and to avoid exposing themselves to the sun during the hottest hours of the day. But many rituals took place outside, which caused thousands of“heat exhaustion”. The Saudi Ministry of Health reported more than 2,700 cases on Sunday, June 16, alone.

Saudi authorities have recorded around 1.8 million participants, including more than 1.6 million from 22 different countries, while around 222,000 are citizens and residents of Saudi Arabia. The dates of the hajj are determined each year according to the Muslim calendar, based on lunar cycles. This year, it falls in the middle of summer. This religious gathering, one of the largest in the world, often turns into tragedy, particularly due to epidemics and crowd movements. In October 2015, a stampede caused nearly 2,000 deaths.

This year’s toll is likely to rise, as many people remain untraceable. Since Saturday, most social networks have been flooded with photos of participants, whose loved ones have not heard from them. Houria Sharif, a 70-year-old Egyptian woman, has been missing since she prayed on Mount Arafat on Saturday. “We’ve knocked on lots of doors, but we haven’t found her until now.”declared one of her friends to AFP.

Mohammed, for his part, says he looked for his wife, Mabrouka bint Salem Shoushana, “in all hospitals. And so far I don’t know anything about her”. The septuagenarian from Tunisia “was so hot and had no place to sleep.” Being unregistered and without an official hajj permit, she was unable to access the air-conditioned facilities.

Mabrouka bint Salem Shoushana is not an isolated case: most of the pilgrims had nowhere to shelter. “Many people collapsed to the ground, unconscious”Khalid Bashir Bazaz, an Indian visitor, testified to the Associated Press agency.

Every year, tens of thousands of them cannot purchase official permits, which are often expensive. They then attempt to participate in the hajj through irregular means. Every Muslim must perform this ritual at least once in their life, one of the five pillars of Islam. However, without official permission, access to structures that allow pilgrims to cool off after hours of outdoor prayers is prohibited.

However, Mecca and its surroundings are increasingly suffering the effects of climate change. According to a Saudi study published in early May in the Journal of Travel Medicine, average temperatures at sites where rituals take place increase by 0.4 degrees Celsius every ten years. As early as 2019, American researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology revealed that even if the world managed to mitigate the worst effects of climate change, the hajj would take place at temperatures exceeding a “extreme danger threshold”, in midsummer, from 2047 to 2052 and from 2079 to 2086.