More than 1,000 Hajj pilgrims die amid soaring temperatures

Media reports over recent days have indicated that more than 1,000 Muslim pilgrims have died during this year’s Hajj in the Saudi Arabian holy city of Mecca.

Extreme temperatures, rising as high as 52°, has seen heat exhaustion cited as a major factor in the deaths.

While Saudi Arabian authorities have not commented on the deaths, 10 countries have reported a total of 1,081 deaths among their nationals making the pilgrimage.

Determined by the lunar Islamic calendar, the timing of the Hajj, one of the five pillars of Islam which all Muslims with the means must complete at least once, has this year again fallen during the Arabian Gulf summer.

While Saudi Arabian authorities attempt to manage the massive crowds making the Hajj each year, reports indicate that officials have had to deal with hundreds of thousands of unregistered pilgrims.

This group is particularly vulnerable to the heat as, without official permits, they are unable to access air-conditioned spaces provided for the 1.8 million authorised pilgrims to cool down.

Deaths have been recorded among citizens of Egypt, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Jordan, Iran, Senegal, Tunisia, Sudan and Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region.

A 2019 study by the journal Geophysical Research Letters said because of the climate crisis, heat stress for Hajj pilgrims would exceed the “extreme danger threshold” from 2047 to 2052 and 2079 to 2086, “with increasing frequency and intensity as the century progresses”.

Image: The Great Mosque in Mecca.