2015 Mina stampede


On 24 September 2015, an event described as a "crush and stampede" caused deaths estimated at well over 717 pilgrims, suffocated or crushed during the annual Hajj pilgrimage in Mina, Mecca, Saudi Arabia, making it the deadliest Hajj disaster in history. Estimates of the number of dead vary; the Associated Press reported dead, while Agence France-Presse reported killed. Based on the total of the individual national reports cited in the table below, at least people died. The government of Saudi Arabia officially reported two days after the event that there had been 769 deaths and 934 injured. These figures remained official at the time of the following year's Hajj and were never updated. The largest number of victims was from Iran, followed by Mali and Nigeria.
The crush took place in Mina at the intersection of streets 204 and 223 leading up to Jamaraat Bridge. The cause of the disaster remains in dispute. The Mina disaster inflamed tensions between regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran, which were already elevated due to the wider turmoil in the Middle East, such as the Syrian Civil War and Yemeni Civil War. In a press conference held on the day of the incident, Saudi Ministry of Interior spokesman Mansour Al-Turki attempted to address most issues regarding the incident. He said in September 2015 that an investigation was ongoing, and that the exact cause of the overcrowding that led to the deadly crush had not yet been ascertained.

Background

The Hajj is an annual pilgrimage in Mecca prescribed as a duty for Muslims to undertake at least once in their lifetime if they can afford to do so physically and financially. As traditionally performed, the Hajj consists of a series of rites including the Stoning of the Devil which takes place at the Jamaraat Bridge in Mina, a district a few miles east of Mecca. The Jamaraat Bridge is a pedestrian bridge from which pilgrims can throw pebbles at the three jamrah pillars. The stoning ritual is the last major ritual and is often regarded as the most dangerous part of the Hajj, with its large crowds, confined spaces, and tight scheduling.
The 2015 Hajj took place against a background of regional turmoil, the highest temperatures in Mecca in 20 years, the threat of MERS, and pre-existing tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
A number of Hajj-related crowd crush disasters have occurred in the past, with 1,426 people being suffocated and trampled to death in a 1990 tunnel tragedy, and at least 701 people killed in crowd crushes between 1991 and 2005. 346 people were killed in a similar Jamaraat incident in 2006, which prompted the Saudi government to improve the infrastructure of the city and its procession routes.
The Saudi Arabian government has been spending $60 billion to expand the Grand Mosque which houses the Kaaba, and has deployed 100,000 security forces and 5,000 CCTV cameras to monitor the crowds. The Saudis have also built a permanent tent city in the Mina valley. It is covered with approximately 160,000 air-conditioned tents across multiple campsites for use by Hajj pilgrims.

Disaster

NationalityDeadMissingRef.
26
463
13753
5241
227
16
10628
5250
40
23
19045
530
20
1717
11410
1290
4640
10
527
21
120
10
107
10
31234
50
421
65
10
7841
27443
10
837
10
620
80
11
302
327
150
70
12
Total2,431427

According to a statement by the Saudi civil defence directorate, a stampede occurred Thursday 24 September 2015 at 09:00 Mecca time at the junction between street 204 and 223 as pilgrims were en route to the Jamaraat Bridge. The Saudi Interior Ministry stated that the stampede was triggered when two large groups of pilgrims intersected from different directions onto the same street. The area was not previously identified as a dangerous bottleneck. The junction lay between two pilgrim camp sites. The International Business Times reported that the governor of Mecca Province and Saudi Arabia's head of the central Hajj committee, Prince Khalid bin Faisal Al Saud, blamed the crush outside the holy city on "some pilgrims with African nationalities"; prompting condemnation from several African leaders.
Press TV reported that an Iranian survivor of the Mina incident, whose name was not revealed, said only a handful of Saudi soldiers assisted those being trampled in the crush. "When I returned to the disaster point to help, Saudi soldiers prevented me from entering the area. This, as only a handful of Saudi soldiers were helping the victims, while a large number of them were standing by idly and looking," the man told Press TV. A number of other survivors have also shared similar accounts, saying that mismanagement by the Saudi authorities and a poor rescue response complicated the situation.
In a press conference held the day of the incident, spokesman of the Ministry of Interior Mansour Al-Turki attempted to address the incident. He said that an investigation was ongoing, that the exact causes for crowding that led to the deadly stampede on Mina Street 204 are yet to be ascertained. He explained that "Street number 204 is a road leading from the camps to the Jamarat Bridge. What happened was that a group of pilgrims on buses were allowed to descend onto the pathways that lead to the Jamarat Bridge at a time that wasn’t allocated to them," Al Arabiya News Channel's correspondent in Mina, Saad Al-Matrafi said. "As they neared the area, they converged with an existing group of people who were already in the area, which pushed the area to over capacity."
One day after the Mina crush tragedy, Saudi media publicized a statement by the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, Abdul-Aziz ibn Abdullah Al ash-Sheikh, exonerating Crown Prince Muhammad bin Nayef from responsibility for the disaster, as his Interior Minister title holds him accountable for safety issues at the Mecca shrine. The Grand Mufti's statement, which characterized the incident as "beyond human control", "inevitable", and attributable to "fate", immunized MBN against possible domestic criticism.

Casualties

The exact casualty figure for the Mina crowd collapse is disputed. The Saudi government officially reported deaths, a figure that did not change, while Iranian media sources have proposed figures as high as. Independent estimates range between and people killed, with the most recent Associated Press estimate giving a death toll of, based on "media reports and officials comments from 36 of the over 180 countries that sent citizens to the hajj".
Estimates of the injured and missing also vary greatly; Saudi reports claim 934 injured; Iranian reports are much higher, estimating more than 2,000 injuries. On the day of the disaster, the Saudi Civil Defence directorate stated that casualties were of multiple nationalities and announced the deployment of 4,000 personnel to the stampede site alongside 220 emergency response units. Pilgrims were redirected away from the stampede site, and the Saudi Red Crescent Authority was mobilised. Medics at Mina's emergency hospital said they alone received almost 700 people on the day of the incident. The eight hospitals around the Hajj landmarks and the six main hospitals in the city of Mecca were operating at full capacity after the stampede, medics said.
By 2 October 2015, the Saudi Arabia Health Ministry stated they had completed the DNA profiling of all unidentified pilgrims who were killed or injured in the crush. DNA samples of the next of kin of Hajj stampede victims were collected at Al-Nour Specialist Hospital, Mecca.

Prominent victims

Other prominent victims included:
Early eyewitnesses' accounting stated that the crush was caused by the closure of the eastern part of Street 206, which forced pilgrims to travel up Street 223, colliding with a mass of people moving the opposite direction on Street 204.
Alhaji Samaila Dabai Yombe, Deputy Governor of the Nigerian state of Kebbi, who was present at the incident, stated that the deaths happened due to a blockage of the route to Jamaraat Bridge. "What actually happened was that all the pilgrims scheduled to throw Jamrat at that time were channeled to one particular street. At a time we got to a certain point around 8:00am, a military vehicle was set across to create a barrier and then some of the Saudi soldiers were standing by, suggesting that you cannot go beyond that point. About 5,000 people coming from the same direction were not aware of the road block in front, which resulted to a tight and stationary human traffic, which made it very difficult for us to even stand. So, we continued to squat to make room for fresh air while the temperature was about 47 degrees Celsius. Pilgrims, in efforts to get fresh air, attempted to scale fences of tents on both sides of the road. Very few succeeded, while most people just succumb to the situation. It was at this juncture that we saw dead bodies piling up around us".
Ishaq Akintola, a Nigerian Professor of Islamic eschatology, gave an eyewitness account of the disaster: "on that fateful day, we found out that some of those who had thrown their own stones made a U-turn instead of moving ahead to take a detour. They came through the route meant for entrance and not exit. They came towards us. They were in a very large group and the road was not spacious enough to allow a free flow of those of us coming to throw stones at the Devil and those who had stoned the Devil. The road could not take those coming and those going. And I discovered that most of those who took the wrong way were Egyptians".

Investigation

Saudi official statements

In a statement released by the Saudi embassy, Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir stated, "The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques has directed to launch a thorough investigation that will be transparent We will reveal the facts when they emerge, and we will not hold anything back. If mistakes were made, those who made them will be held accountable, and we will make sure that we will learn from this in order to ensure that it doesn’t happen again."
Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Nayef is overseeing the official investigation. Saudi newspapers reported that on October 18, 2015 bin Nayef had spoken to the investigators and urged them to "continue their efforts to find the causes of the accident, praying to Allah Almighty to accept the martyrs and wishing the injured a speedy recovery." However, Saudi Arabia has not yet released any findings by their investigators.
Prompted by difficulties in identifying bodies after the Mina disaster, Saudi Arabian Deputy Minister of Health, Dr. Hamad Al-Duwailie, announced plans to require all Hajj pilgrims to wear an electronic bracelet containing identity information. Al-Duwailie also said that Saudi Ministry of Health would upgrade its current Hajj and Umrah committee a permanent coordinating body within the Ministry. In January 2016, the Saudi Shura Council recommended "raising the capacity of roads leading to the Jamarat facility, and to the accommodation areas in Mina" as well as more studies on Hajj-related transportation flow.

Recommendations by independent experts

Najmedin Meshkati, Professor of Engineering and International Relations at the University of Southern California, who is an expert in accident investigation, recommended in a self-authored opinion piece in the World Post that, "the Saudi government should embark on the immediate creation of an independent investigation commission/panel. This interdisciplinary commission/panel should be chaired by a nationally renowned Saudi statesman or scholar, with members selected from Saudi Arabia and affected countries based on their technical expertise and to include responsible governmental entities, first responder agencies, and academics of requisite disciplines for accident investigation. And it should be empowered by the subpoena power and charged to conduct a comprehensive, systematic and interdisciplinary investigation by employing the system-oriented, robust 'AcciMap' methodology to write the most technically-sound report on the root-causes of this tragedy".
Amer Shalaby is a Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Toronto's Transportation Research Institute, former Hajj pilgrim, and consultant to Saudi government on crowd management. Shalaby, who specializes in transportation planning for large-scale events, proposes using "smart phones and other static and dynamic sensors" to provide authorities real-time information that could identify potential hot spots during the Hajj. He also suggests that "some of the effective methods of highway traffic flow management, such as flow metering, could be adapted for streamlining crowd flows in Mecca."
Keith Still, Professor of Crowd Science at Manchester Metropolitan University in Britain, who helped redesign the Jamaraat after a disaster in 2004, said there was criticism at the time that the upgrades at the Jamaraat had not been extended to other areas. He said "For complex systems that flow in and out, if you make one change along the way it can have knock-on and ripple effects elsewhere. Change any one part of system with 3 million people, and there's a danger of an accident like this."
Mohammed Ajmal, a physician specializing in Emergency Medicine and former manager of a medical center set up to treat Indian Hajj pilgrims, details issues with both the design of the Mina tent city and quick access to disaster medical care at the site. Ajmal points to structural design flaws in Mina, calling it a "badly designed death trap—in times of disaster" as it attempts to funnel tens of thousands of people through T intersections, such as the junction of Streets 204 and 223 where the crush took place. Compression asphyxia is the cause of death for most victims of a crowd collapse, and can occur in within ten minutes; Ajmal notes that Mina's design prevents medical care from arriving within that time frame stating that people at crush site with the commonly seen crowd flow pattern are "destined to die" within minutes before any medical help can reach the site.

Reactions

Governments

In the wake of the Mina disaster, many world leaders sent messages of sympathy and consolation, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Qatari Prime Minister Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani, King Mohammed VI of Morocco, Kuwaiti Emir Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, Pakistani President Mamnoon Hussain, and Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi.
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, which Iranian officials is attending the event, 3 October 2015
cemetery, where 1987 Mecca incident victims are also buried
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Non-governmental

Saudi royal convoy

Lebanon-based Arabic-language daily Ad-Diyar reported that a convoy escorting Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud, Deputy Crown Prince and Saudi Minister of Defense, composed of 200 soldiers and 150 police officers triggered the disaster by blocking a street forcing pilgrims to turn around against the flow of traffic. Ad-Diyar also alleged that the Deputy Crown Prince and entourage swiftly left the scene, and that the Saudi authorities sought to impose a media blackout on reporting the Prince's presence in the area.
Iranian media reported the Ad-Diyar story, and Iranian Hajj officials stated that two streets near the disaster point had been sealed for "unknown reasons", while the Iranian Fars News Agency, quoted a member of the Iraqi parliament, Hassan Salem, as saying "the Mina disaster was an engineered tragedy to kidnap the Iraqi and Iranian officials on the pretext of the Mina incident." A reporter with the BBC's Hausa Service, Yusuf Ibrahim Yakasai, confirmed that at least one road leading to the Jamaraat was blocked. Saudi officials denied the reports, stating diplomatic convoys take place in the south of Mina and in tunnels, while the incident took place in the north.

Beheadings of responsible officials

The Saudi government was reported to have beheaded 28 people found responsible for the disaster.

Killing of the injured

Iran's leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accused the Saudis of killing injured pilgrims by putting them in containers along with the dead.

Aftermath

The 2015 Mina Crush disaster has increased tensions in the already-strained relationship between Saudi Arabia and Iran, led to calls from politicians in a number of Muslim nations for changes in oversight of Mecca and the Hajj, and bolstered opposition to King Salman among the senior members of the Saudi Arabian royal family.

Criticism of Saudi control of Hajj

Politicians and religious leaders in a number of Muslim countries have cited the 2015 Mina Crush disaster as reason for control of the Hajj be handed over to either a different nation or to a pan-Islamic organization. Mehmet Ali Sahin Deputy Chair of Turkey's Justice and Development Party criticised the Saudi organisation, and claimed that Turkey could do a better job than Saudi Arabia at organising the Hajj pilgrimage, calling for Turkey to be entrusted with its management. Nouri al-Maliki, former Prime Minister of Iraq, proposed that the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation should take over administration of the Hajj. Mohammad Emami Kashani, an Iranian Ayatollah, also called for transfer of the control of the Hajj to the OIC, stating "Saudi Arabia is incapable of organising the pilgrimage. The running of the Hajj must be handed over to Islamic states." Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary General of Hezbollah stated that Saudi Arabia should allow Muslim countries to help the kingdom run the Hajj pilgrimage rituals, emphasising the need for the formation of a Muslim committee to "supervise the management" of the annual Islamic event. The Saudi government rejected such calls; Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal stated Saudi control over the Hajj was "a matter of sovereignty and privilege and service".
In 2016, supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei sent a global message via his website severely criticizing Saudi rulers for what he called "the crimes they have caused throughout the world of Islam," and asked they be held responsible. In his message Khamenei described the nature of Saudi rulers as "blasphemous, faithless, dependent and materialistic," and asked "the world of Islam" to know them. He demanded reconsidering the management of two holy places and the issue of hajj due to what he described as "Saudi rulers' oppressive behavior towards God's guests," referring to 2015 Mina disaster. "Otherwise Muslims would face biggest problems," he warned. "The hesitation and failure to rescue the half-dead and injured people... is also obvious and incontrovertible.... They murdered them," he said.

Increased Saudi–Iranian tensions

Government and religious leaders of Iran—which lost at least 464 citizens in the Mina disaster—have been harshly critical of Saudi Arabia. Saudi leaders have in turn have claimed that Iran is attempting to take advantage of a tragedy for political purposes.
In the immediate aftermath of the Mina Crush, both Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, and Iranian President, Hassan Rouhani, had harsh words for the Saudi government and blamed Saudi Arabia for the disaster. Rouhani suggested that the Mina crush could be the result of the Saudi government moving their best troops to Yemen, and leaving Hajj crowd control in the hands of less experienced soldiers. While Ebrahim Raisi, Iran's State Prosecutor claimed the disaster had been caused by the Saudi officials blocking a road so as to clear a path for a Saudi convoy, and that the House of Saud should be held responsible under international law. Iranian legal experts later decided that Iran could not bring such a case before the International Court of Justice or the International Criminal Court due to jurisdictional issues. Iranian officials also accused Saudi Arabia with kidnapping Iranian diplomat, Ghazanfar Roknabadi, who went missing during the Hajj, until his body was finally identified on 25 November 2015. On 24 November 2014, Iran announced that it was forming its own fact-finding committee to investigate the disaster. Iran claims that the death toll of the disaster far exceeds what has been reported, and that between 4,700 and 7,500 pilgrims actually died. On 4 January 2016, Iranian government spokesman Mohammad Bagher Nobakht stated that Iran would be suspending participation by its nationals in the Umrah pilgrimage to Mecca, as "conditions of safety will not be guaranteed to pilgrims".
Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir has urged Iran to wait for the results of the official Saudi investigation, stating that the Saudi government, "will reveal the facts when they emerge. And we will not hold anything back. If mistakes were made, who made them will be held accountable." Saudi government officials have made few official comments addressing specific Iranian allegations, while attempting to de-escaltate tensions with Iran. However, Mohammed bin Nawaf bin Abdulaziz, Saudi Ambassador to the UK, did specifically deny what he called "unfounded allegations", including accusations that a road blockage by a Saudi royal convoy caused the disaster. Additionally, an anonymous Saudi official involved with management of the Hajj suggested to a reporter for Al-Monitor that Mina disaster might be the result of Iranian sabotage, and that the Iranian Hajj Mission was being investigated.
Amid deteriorating diplomatic relations and following months of negotiations over visa requirements and safety logistics, in May 2016 Iran suspended participation in the upcoming Hajj scheduled for September 2016. Iran previously suspended participation in the Hajj in 1988 and 1989, after 400 Iranian pilgrims were killed by Saudi security forces.

Opposition to Saudi King Salman

The Mina disaster increased and emboldened opposition to Saudi King Salman. The Guardian reported after the disaster that a "senior Saudi prince has launched an unprecedented call for change in the country's leadership" writing two letters calling for his replacement. The prince was quoted by the Guardian as saying "The public are also pushing this very hard, all kinds of people, tribal leaders They say you have to do this or the country will go to disaster." According to reports, favored to replace Salman is his younger brother, Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz, another son of Saudi Arabia's founding king Ibn Saud, and former Interior Minister.
The likelihood of such a coup, at least in the short term, and the authenticity of the prince's letter, have both been questioned. However, structural economic problems, the Yemen War, and discord in the royal family all contribute to the real possibility of instability for Saudi Arabia. But as the holder of the royal title "Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques", King Salman has been embarrassed by the twin disasters that bracketed the 2015 Hajj season—the Mecca crane collapse and the Mina Crush.

Description as "stampede"

Some academics who study crowd movements and crushing disasters have questioned the use of the term "stampede". "The rhetoric of 'stampede' is often used to imply that the crowd is animalistic or mindless, but from a crowd psychology point of view, I'm sure that there was a logical explanation for the crush", University of Sussex crowd behavioral expert Anne Templeton told Newsweek. "The density of the Hajj has been shown to reach up to 6–8 people per square meter, so I would be very surprised if a stampede could occur in the first place."
They argue that the Mina disaster is better described as a "progressive crowd collapse": beginning at densities of about six to seven persons per square meter, individuals are pressed so closely against each other they are unable to move as individuals, and shockwaves can travel through a crowd which, at such densities, behaves somewhat like a fluid. If a single person falls, or other people reach down to help, waves of bodies can be involuntarily precipitated forward into the open space. One such shockwave can create other openings in the crowd nearby, precipitating further crushing. Unable to draw breath, people in a crowd can also be crushed while standing.
Use of the word "stampede", says Edwin Galea of the University of Greenwich, is the result of "pure ignorance and laziness … it gives the impression that it was a mindless crowd only caring about themselves, and they were prepared to crush people." In reality, "people are only directly crushed by others who have no choice, and the people who can choose... are too far away from the epicentre" to be aware of what is happening. According to experts, true "stampedes" rarely occur except when a crowd is fleeing in fear, such as from a fire, and rarely does trampling by other human beings in such "stampede" conditions result in fatal injuries.
"If you look at the analysis, I’ve not seen any instances of the cause of mass fatalities being a stampede," says Keith Still, professor of crowd science at Manchester Metropolitan University. "People don't die because they panic. They panic because they are dying."