Saudi policemen look at monitor screens showing footage from cameras set up around the holy places, during a tour for journalists, in Mina yesterday.

Agencies/Makkah

A leading Saudi cleric yesterday defended his country’s handling of the annual Haj pilgrimage, a day after 717 pilgrims died in a stampede.
“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with its people, agencies and institutions, has been making efforts to serve pilgrims for decades,” Sheikh Saleh bin Mohamed, the imam of the Grand Mosque in Makkah, Islam’s holiest site, said in a sermon.
“The country is managing the Haj season efficiently and competently,” he said.
“This competence is a source of pride and will not be harmed by an accident resulting from crowding or non-compliance with (Haj-related) directives,” the cleric said.
Saudi King Salman ordered a review of Haj plans, and Health Minister Khaled al-Falih said an investigation would be conducted rapidly and a final toll of dead and wounded calculated.
At least 863 pilgrims were injured in the disaster, in which two big groups of pilgrims collided at a crossroads in Mina, a few kilometres east of Makkah, on their way to performing the “Stoning of the Devil” ritual at Jamarat.
The stampede “was perhaps because some pilgrims moved without following instructions by the relevant authorities”, the minister said in a statement.
Iran demanded that it and other affected countries be represented in the Saudi investigation into the stampede.
“Countries such as Iran, which have suffered so much, should be represented in the inquiry to determine the causes of the catastrophe and to gain assurances that it will not be repeated in the future,” First Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri said after an extraordinary session of the cabinet in Tehran.
Hundreds of Iranians held anti-Saudi rallies in Tehran and other parts of the country yesterday, Iranian news agency Fars reported.
The agency said that the Iranian foreign ministry had summoned the Saudi charge d’affaires to Tehran and strongly protested what it called “his country’s failure” to protect the lives of pilgrims.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan came to Saudi Arabia’s defence.
“I do not sympathise with the hostile statements against Saudi Arabia,” Erdogan told journalists.
The Turkish leader said that it would be wrong to “point a finger at Saudi Arabia which does its best”, to make the Haj pilgrimage possible.  
“You have to see the glass as half full,” he said, adding that each country suffers failures.  
Saudi online newspaper Sabq meanwhile blamed Iranian pilgrims for the crush.
The paper, citing unnamed witnesses, said waves of Iranian pilgrims had ignored rules by moving in the opposite direction near a site for the stone-throwing ritual.
With pilgrims frantically searching for missing compatriots and photographs of piles of the dead circulating on social media, the tragedy haunted many on the Haj a day on.
“There were layers of bodies, maybe three layers,” said one witness who asked not to be named. “Some people were alive under the pile of bodies and were trying to climb up but in vain, because their strength failed and they dropped dead.
“I felt helpless not to be able to save people. I saw them dying in front of my eyes,” he said.
An Algerian pilgrim told Algeria’s Al Shurouk television: “We saw death: People were stepping over the mutilated bodies in front of you, four or five on top of each other.”
Interior ministry spokesman Major General Mansour Turki was quoted in Saudi media yesterday as saying the security forces had immediately responded and begun to rescue those who fell in the crush.
Turki said “a large number of pilgrims were in motion at the same time” at an intersection of two streets in Mina.
“The great heat and fatigue of the pilgrims contributed to the large number of victims,” he said.  
Speaking in New York, Pope Francis expressed “my sentiments of closeness” with Muslims after the tragedy. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the United States offered condolences.
While the Saudi authorities have not yet identified the nationalities of the victims, Iran said 131 of its pilgrims died in the stampede and 365 others were still missing.
India and Egypt reported 14 deaths each among their pilgrims.
There were at least seven Pakistani pilgrims among the dead, according to Pakistan’s private Geo TV.
Yesterday, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims performed the stoning ritual.
The pilgrims returned to cast pebbles at designated pillars inside a multilevel structure known as the Jamarat Bridge in Mina amid tight security.
They chanted “Allahu Akhbar” as they each threw 21 pebbles.
Security guards were deployed in large numbers at the site and were strict in stopping any pilgrims from moving in the opposition direction to head off any potential stampedes.
According to the official Saudi news agency SPA, the Jamarat Bridge accommodated all pilgrims for the rite.
“Groups of pilgrims performed the ritual easily and safely,” the agency said.
The three-day pebble-throwing ritual symbolises resistance to the devil’s temptation.
The Haj ends today with pilgrims heading to Makkah to walk around the Kabaa seven times in what is called the “farewell circumambulation”.
Around 1.9mn pilgrims are participating in this year’s Haj, according to Saudi officials.

British Muslims call for compulsory safety training
British Muslims have called for compulsory safety training as a visa requirement for pilgrims travelling to Saudi Arabia for Haj, following Thursday’s catastrophic crush that killed more than 700 people.
Habib Malik, the director of the Scottish Haj and Umrah Trust, told the BBC he supported “obligatory” training for people who want to make the pilgrimage.
“Train the people who are coming because it’s not possible just to rely on one government to manage all that without even support from external (sources),” Malik said.
“So I think every country should be playing a role. And should be training their citizens when they come here,” he said from Makkah.
Ibrahim Mogra, assistant secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, backed Malik’s call, the broadcaster said.
Shuja Shafi, the head of the Muslim Council, said the scale of the Haj “places an unparalleled burden on the organisers”.
More than 20,000 British Muslims travel to Saudi Arabia for the annual Haj, but it remains unknown how many were there on Thursday.
Several families have told British media they have been unable to contact relatives believed to have been in Saudi Arabia, but the government has not confirmed any British casualties.
The Foreign Office said consular staff were “urgently seeking more information and stand ready to provide support to any British nationals that may have been involved”.