Mecca Dead Put as High as 1,000
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MECCA, Saudi Arabia — Officials said Tuesday that 250 Muslims died in a stampede a day earlier during the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, but witnesses, doctors and a senior Asian diplomat put the death toll above 1,000. The faithful were on their way to take part in a symbolic stoning of the devil when the incident occurred.
Some pilgrims died when they were knocked off a crowded overpass. Others were trampled to death. In the panic, some survived by tying their clothes into ropes and escaping to the ground below.
People “were yelling and screaming for mercy from Allah,” Osman Taj, a pilgrim from Sudan, said Tuesday.
Thousands of pilgrims, jammed together on the pedestrian overpass, were inching toward the sacred cavern where the ritual stoning takes place when a new wave of people came surging through, Pakistani pilgrim Talaat Sharif said.
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