Abdullah Asiri, Saudi Arabia's deputy minister for population health, told AFP at the Mina hospital that "the focus is on heat-related conditions because the hajj coincides with extreme heat".

Pilgrims worship and circumambulate around the Kaaba, a stone building at the center of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, after fulfilling the hajj pilgrimage, June 19, 2024.

Extreme heat kills more than 1,300 during Hajj pilgrimage More than 1,300 people died during this year's Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia as the faithful faced extreme high temperatures at Islamic ...

That’s a challenge for Saudi Arabia, which has made religious pilgrimages a key target of its Vision 2030 economic plan. It hopes to host about 30 million foreign worshippers a year by 2030.

During the annual hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, one of the most important events on the Muslim calendar, at least 450 people died under a scorching sun as they prayed at sacred sites around the ...

Over 1,300 Muslim pilgrims reportedly died during the annual Hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, this month in Saudi Arabia, where temperatures have soared beyond 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees ...

Saudi Arabia has not commented on the death toll amid the heat during the pilgrimage, required of every able Muslim once in their life, nor offered any causes for those who died.