CAPE TOWN, Sept 24 (ANA) – A South African has told of how for every Hajj pilgrim he tried to help in Thursday’s stampede at Mina, a dozen others collapsed and perished in front him.
“People were stumbling, falling, trying to get up. They were dehydrated, getting disorientated, they were dying in front of our eyes,” said Pietermaritzburg businessman Zaid Bayat by telephone from Mina.
“They were suffocating. We tried to help revive them, but for every person you were helping there 13, 14 others just falling down. It was very traumatic.”
Bayat said he believed the trouble began when a group of a few thousand turned, and in stifling heat, began moving against the flow of worshippers taking part in the Hajj’s last major rite near the holy Islamic city of Mecca.
“A group of people, maybe a few thousand, began moving back after they had performed a ritual. I think that is how it started. It was very difficult because there were people in wheelchairs in that group, and also in the rest moving forward, people in wheel chairs on both sides, so people started panicking.”
Bayat said in desperation some tried to climb over the perimeter and onto the roofs and into the tents of camps set up along the road.
“They were trying to get out, trying to get past the police barricades, to get away.”
He said he was leading a group of about 70 South Africans, one of whom is diabetic and had collapsed, and had taken them into a Moroccan camp to rest and drink water when he realised something was happening outside.
“If it had been another two minutes we would have been right in the middle of it. About ten of us went out and tried to help the people. ”
Bayat said his group was the last of some 2,000 South Africans taking part in the annual pilgrimage and he believed the others had all been safely elsewhere when the deadly stampede happened. The latest toll for the tragedy is 717 people died and another 863 injured.
The president of the Muslim Judicial Council, Moulama Ihsaan Hendricks, said he had been in contact with South Africans in Mina and had not heard of any South Africans seriously injured or killed in the tragedy.
“According to our records, there is no South Africans that have died in the stampede,” Hendricks said but added that the local Muslim community was deeply touched by the deadliest incident during the pilgrimage in 25 years. While we are celebrating Eid, our hearts and our emotions are deeply with the pilgrims, not just the South Africans but all pilgrims. This stampede comes as a shock to our community.”
– African News Agency (ANA)
