THE death toll of Muslim haj pilgrims killed in a huge fire in Saudi Arabia rose to 343, Saudi state run radio said yesterday.
The radio did not give new figures for the number of people injured when the blaze on Tuesday tore through a tent camp at Mina near Islam's holy city of Mecca. But officials had previously said 1,290 were injured in the blaze.
The radio said authorities were still struggling to identify the bodies of the victims. It did not give a breakdown of the victims' nationalities, but diplomats said earlier most of them were Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis.
Saudi Arabia said the fire was an accident with no political motive. The blaze, fanned by high winds, had whipped through 70,000 tents in the Mina plain.
Two million Muslims yesterday prayed at Mount Arafat near Mecca to mark the peak of the annual haj pilgrimage. At sunset they moved to Mozdalifah, between Mina and Mount Arafat, where they will collect pebbles to stone three pillars symbolising the devil.
Earlier diplomats expressed frustration at Saudi reluctance to give information on the numbers or identities of those injured. "Hospital staff are not authorised to speak and the Saudi authorities are not sharing new information with the embassies or press," one diplomat said.
In Mina, the air was thick with the smell of smoke and the ground littered with remains, from burnt out buses to charred water bottles. Trucks carted off blackened debris, while workers - helped by Saudi troops - erected new tents.
Some pilgrims gave up their effort to fulfil one of the five tenets of Islam. "We will come next year for the haj, because we have lost everything," one Pakistani pilgrim said of his group of 10.
"We do not have new casualty figures. We expect they will run into three figures," the Indian ambassador, Mr Mohammad Hamad Asari, said "It's hard to sac because the bodies were charred in the fire and we cannot identify them except from a missing persons list. It could be 100, it could be more," he said of the number of Indian victims which on Tuesday he put at 100.
Most victims were believed to be from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Saudi newspapers said the fire had also engulfed Syrian, Lebanese, Egyptian, Sudanese, Yemeni and Moroccan tents.
The latest haj tragedy reinforces the Saudi view that countries should adhere to an agreed quota system. The number of pilgrims each year is governed by quotas set for Muslim countries in 1988 by the Organisation of the Islamic Conference.
Haj pilgrims carry everything from small gas stoves to food and prayer mats. They often squat in vast rows of tents, like the ones engulfed in Tuesday's blaze, boiling pots of tea and coffee, an cooking. It is a recipe for disaster in desert temperatures which this year soared to 40.