The prime minister of Egypt announced this weekend the government of strongman Abdel Fattah al-Sisi would shut down at least 16 travel companies implicated in sending Egyptians to the Hajj pilgrimage without proper registration, resulting in hundreds dead from heat illness this month.

The Hajj is an annual pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, that typically takes place in the hot summer months. As it is mandatory for Muslims to make the journey at least once in their lives, demand is high, so Riyadh caps the number of pilgrims a year through special Hajj visas.

These visas are allotted by country and often granted via lottery. Those registered with proper visas have access to air-conditioned facilities, water, and other necessary amenities. Saudi authorities announced that it welcomed 1.8 million registered pilgrims this year and rejected 171,000 people found trying to enter holy sites without a Hajj visa.

Many pilgrims disregard the legal visa process, however, attempting to participate in the Hajj by obtaining regular travel visas to Saudi Arabia and traveling to Mecca, often with the aid of local travel agencies in their home countries that promise proper lodging and transportation. Once in Mecca, however, many report that the travel companies abandon them in the desert, forcing them to walk, often for miles, to various holy sites with no water or shelter.

The combination of thousands of unregistered pilgrims walking in blistering heat with no access to cooling facilities and the high number of elderly people attempting to complete the Hajj before the end of their lives resulted in a particularly deadly Hajj this year.

Paramedics carry a muslim pilgrim for a medical check after he fell down due to a heat stroke at pillars, in Mina, near the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, Sunday, June 16, 2024.  (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

The Saudi government confirmed on Sunday that 1,301 people died during the Hajj, of which 83 percent were illegally participating in the religious rite.

“We dealt with large numbers of people affected by heat stress,” Health Minister Fahd al-Jalajel confirmed. The number of elderly people participating in the Hajj this year may be slightly higher than in prior years as the Saudi government banned individuals over the age of 65 in 2020 from partaking in response to the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, lifting the age limit in 2023.

The 2024 death toll is significantly higher than that of the year before, in which Saudi authorities estimated that 230 people died.

The deaths have brought renewed scrutiny on Saudi Arabia’s custodianship over the holiest cities in Islam. Riyadh’s Ministry of Hajj and Umrah has attempted to respond to the criticism by highlighting positive stories from this year’s pilgrimage, including those from special needs pilgrims.

Of the 1,301 people confirmed dead during the Hajj, Egypt claimed nearly half – 658 people – of the casualties. Of these, 630 were reportedly identified as unregistered pilgrims. The high proportion of Egyptian nationals traveling to Saudi Arabia and dying in part as a result of not securing access to shade – particularly during a year in which Sisi himself participated in the Hajj – prompted the Egyptian president to organize a crisis task force last week to identify the underlying causes behind the death count.

Prior to the reports of escalating death counts in Mecca, Sisi had issued a statement on June 16 applauding Saudi Arabia for the “excellent organization” he had experienced while participating in the Hajj. The Hajj officially ended on June 18.

On Saturday, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly announced that the Egyptian government had identified 16 travel agencies that had organized Hajj trips using inadequate visas and shut them down.

“The prime minister has ordered the licenses of these companies to be revoked, their managers to be referred to the public prosecutor and the imposition of a fine to benefit the families of the pilgrims who died because of them,” the Egyptian cabinet announced, according to the Egyptian government-affiliated newspaper al-Ahram. Those identified will likely face criminal charges of fraud, Ahram reported.

In addition to those confirmed dead, an unknown number of foreign nations are missing in Saudi Arabia. As they did not enter Mecca with appropriate registration, tracking them is difficult. The head of the Egyptian delegation to the Hajj this year, Major-General Mostafa Hussein, is reportedly touring hospitals in Mecca to meet with Egyptian pilgrims.

Reports surfacing last week citing eyewitnesses described harrowing scenes in Mecca’s streets of pilgrims, many of them elderly, lying on the ground unable to get up.

“In several pictures, corpses appear to have been left where they presumably collapsed,” the German news outlet Deutsche Welle reported.

In an interview with the BBC, an Egyptian man identified as Sayyed said his 70-year-old mother died during the Hajj this year. Like many, she traveled to Mecca with the wrong visa.

“Many Egyptian pilgrims come from poor villages. They spend their life savings on the spiritual journey to the holiest city in Islam,” Sayyed explained, saying his mother was “totally abandoned” in Mecca with no water or shelter and the travel company that arranged her trip disappeared after her death.

 

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