68 Indian people lost their lives during this year’s very hot Hajj trip, according to a diplomat in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday. This brings the total number of deaths to almost 600.
“We have confirmed around 68 dead… Some are because of natural causes and we had many old-age pilgrims. And some are due to the weather conditions, that’s what we assume,” the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP.
The new figure follows two Arab diplomats’ Tuesday report to AFP that 550 deaths had been reported during the hajj, one of the five pillars of Islam that all Muslims who have the means to do so must perform at least once.
The Arab ambassadors stated that this number comprised 323 Egyptians and 60 Jordanians, with one stating that almost all of the Egyptian deaths were due to heat.
Indonesia, Iran, Senegal, Tunisia, and the independent Kurdistan region of Iraq have also acknowledged fatalities; however, in many of these cases, the cause has not been disclosed by the government.
An AFP count indicates that there have been 645 confirmed deaths to date.
Last year more than 200 pilgrims were reported dead, most of them from Indonesia.
Saudi Arabia has not provided information on fatalities, though it reported more than 2,700 cases of “heat exhaustion” on Sunday alone.
The diplomat who confirmed the Indian fatalities said there were also some Indian pilgrims missing, but he declined to provide an exact number.
“This happens every year… We can’t say that it is abnormally high this year,” he said.
“It’s somewhat similar to last year but we will know more in the coming days.”
The hajj has fallen amid the scorching Saudi summer for the past few years.
Temperatures in the region where rituals are performed are rising by 0.4 degrees Celsius (0.72 degrees Fahrenheit) every decade, according to a Saudi study that was released last month.
