Storm causes crane crash in Saudi Arabia

107 people killed as crane crashes in Mecca's Grand Mosque

Saudi Arabia’s civil defence authority says more than 200 injured in preparations for annual hajj pilgrimage

the Guardian,

11 September, 2015

At least 107 people were killed and 238 more were injured when a crane collapsed on to the Grand Mosque during storms in the Muslim holy city of Mecca on Friday, the Saudi Arabian government has said.

The country’s civil defence authority said on its Twitter account that rescue teams had been sent to the scene. It said stormy weather was to blame for the tragedy and offered its “sincere condolences” over the deaths, as well as its prayers for the speedy recoveries of those injured.

In a tweet, the authority added that its authority’s director general Suleiman al-Amr attended the scene of the disaster.

— الدفاع المدني (@KSA_998)September 11, 2015

مباشرة مدير عام الدفاع المدني الفريق سليمان العمرو لحادث سقوط رافعة في الحرم المكي بـ #العاصمة_المقدسة.pic.twitter.com/aeVrlSi547

Pictures circulating on social media, which the Guardian could not independently verify and which were too graphic to reproduce, showed what appeared to be numerous bodies on the ground - as well as bloodied, injured people being helped the scene.

They showed a large group of people lying on polished tiled flooring, most of them near to a wall and surrounded by rubble and other debris. One man appears to be being wheeled out of the building on a wheelchair.

Other images posted on the same account appeared to show parts of a crane that crashed through the roof of a building.

Abdel Aziz Naqoor, who said he works at the mosque, told Agence France-Presse that he saw the crane fall after being hit by the storm.

“If it weren’t for al-Tawaf bridge the injuries and deaths would have been worse,” he said, referring to a covered walkway that surrounds the Kaaba and broke the crane’s all.

The UK Foreign Office said it was urgently investigating whether any British citizens were caught up in the accident. “We are are aware of the incident and are in close contact with the Saudi authorities,” a spokeswoman said.

The governor of Mecca region, Prince Khaled al-Faisal, has ordered an investigation into the incident and was heading to the mosque, according to the local government.

Muslims make their annual hajj pilgrimage later this month and Saudi authorities go to great lengths to be prepared for the millions of people who converge on Mecca.

Saudi authorities have taken a series of safety measures over the past decade aimed at preventing crowd crushes after tragedies such as the stampede in 2006, which resulted in 350 deaths, a building collapse in the same year which killed 76 and a stampede that killed more than 200 people in 2004.

Officials limited numbers attending the hajj after a peak in 2013, in which more than 3.1 million pilgrims arrived. Bottlenecks in which crushes occurred along the pilgrimage route were widened and religious authorities decreed that it was not mandatory for pilgrims to touch sacred spots.

The Grand Mosque, which houses the Kaaba, the cube-shaped structure towards which Muslims worldwide pray, has been surrounded by a number of cranes. Reconstruction work has been going on to enlarge the mosque by 400,000 sq m (4.3 m sq ft), allowing it to accommodate up to 2.2 million people.

The work has continued for the past two years and was expected to be largely completed before this year’s pilgrimage, which begins on 22 September.

Saudi authorities have lavished vast sums to improve Mecca’s transportation system in an effort to prevent more disasters. Security services often surround Islam’s sacred city with checkpoints and other measures to prevent people arriving for the pilgrimage without authorisation. Those procedures, aimed at reducing crowd pressure which can lead to stampedes, fires and other hazards, have been intensified in recent years as security threats grow throughout the Middle East.

According to a report on Al-Jazeera television, the crane fell on the east side of the mosque after a sandstorm and heavy rain. It said that the building’s doors were shut and people were locked inside. Its reporter said there was “slight pandemonium” and that one person was killed in the rush to get out.

The reporter said: “Dozens of ambulances are heading to the site. The authorities closed off the area shortly afterwards. This whole place is already a construction site. What made it worse is that around 5.30pm there was severe rain and it’s just gushing down the road. I am surrounded by people who are grieving. The mood here is of sadness.”