After an absence of last year, Iranian pilgrims will participate in this year’s annual Hajj said Iran’s Hajj Pilgrimage Organization after Saudi Arabia agreed to make the necessary arrangements for the pilgrims to participate in the rituals.
An agreement had been made between Iran and Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Hajj and Umra on the dispatch of more than 85,000 Iranian pilgrims to Hajj this year, the organization announced in a statement on Friday.
“The ministry of hajj and the Iranian organization have completed all the necessary measures to ensure Iranian pilgrims perform hajj 1438 according to procedures followed by all Muslim countries,” the official Saud Press Agency said, referring to this year in the Islamic calendar.
The report said the arrangements were finalized after a meeting took place with an Iranian delegation on February 23. Iran decided to stop sending pilgrims to Hajj over security concerns after two deadly incidents claimed the lives of more than 470 Iranian pilgrims during the 2015 Hajj rituals.
Days after the deadly human crush, which occurred in September 2015, Saudi Arabia published a death toll of 770 but refused to update it despite gradually surging fatality figures from individual countries whose nationals had been among the victims of the crush. Iran said about 4,700 people, including over 465 of its nationals, lost their lives in the incident.
Earlier that month, a massive construction crane had collapsed into Mecca’s Grand Mosque, killing more than 100 pilgrims, including 11 Iranians, and injuring over 200 others, among them 32 Iranian nationals.
Source: News Agencies
