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Riyadh prevents us from entering for hajj: Iraqi pilgrims

By: Abdulali

JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia: More than 500 Iraqi pilgrims are still on Saudi borders in Ar Ar region since last Saturday, reports said.

One of them said that the Saudi government did not give them permission to enter its land to perform the annual hajj pilgrimage without telling them any reason for the move.

Al-Haj Adnan Yassin added that the 500 pilgrims came in one caravan and they have passports issued from Iraq stamped with permission to leave the country. He said the US forces had confirmed legality and validity of the documents which the caravan members keep.

Yassin told that a large number of the caravan is old people as well as sick, and the food stuff which they had is about to finish.

He appealed to the Custodian of Two Holy Mosques King Fahad bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud to permit them for entering the kingdom for performing hajj.

Meanwhile, some of the 1.2 million foreign pilgrims and hundreds of thousands from Saudi Arabia expected to perform the annual hajj pilgrimage have started descending at the holy city of Mecca, which houses Holy Ka’aba.

According to Okaz newspaper report Wednesday, over 1.07 million pilgrims have already arrived in Saudi Arabia, 972,000 of them by air for the hajj, which officially starts on January 19.

Another 17,000 arrived by sea, with more than 6,500 Sudanese and 1,000 Egyptian pilgrims crossing the Red Sea to the port of Jeddah, it said.

Hajj is also a profitable season for the western region of oil-rich Saudi Arabia, which reportedly earned about 5.2 billion riyals (1.38 billion dollars) from foreigners during last year's pilgrimage.

A survey showed the 1.4 million foreign pilgrims who flocked to Holy Mecca spent 1.4 billion riyals (373.3 million dollars) on accommodation. They also spent two billion (533.3 million dollars) on air transport, of which 20 percent went to state carrier Saudi Airlines, and the remainder on other services and gifts.

Figures on pilgrims are expected to keep rising, forcing the kingdom to increase its capacity to accommodate the largest annual Muslim gathering worldwide and where deadly stampedes do happen.

Estimates expect hajj figures to grow to three million in five years and to between 3.5 and 3.7 million in 10 years.

This would be in addition to more than 10 million performing the umrah every year by 2014.

Last year's hajj saw 251 pilgrims trampled or suffocated to death during a stampede as they vied to stone three pillars representing the devil in Mina, near Holy Mecca.

The incident prompted King Fahd to announce a major renovation project, which envisages boosting the capacity at the stoning site from 160,000 pilgrims an hour to 500,000.

The hajj season ends on January 21 marking the first day of the feast of Eid-ol-Adha.

END