Mecca: A storm which caused a construction crane to topple on Friday afternoon at the Masjid al-Haram, or Grand Mosque, in Mecca killed at least 107 people, injuring 238 others, said the Saudi Arabia’s civil defense authorities.
Photos and videos on social media showed the crane crashing through the mosque roof and its aftermath, with bodies, blood and debris spread across the courtyard.
The crane fell 10 days before the start of Hajj, the annual pilgrimage expected to bring 2 million people to Mecca. The Masjid al-Haram is the largest mosque in the world and surrounds Islam’s holiest site, the Kaaba, a cube-shaped shrine that worshippers circle.
More than 50 rescue teams and 80 ambulances converged on the mosque as part of the rescue effort after the crane fell at 5:24 p.m. local time, said Saudi Civil Defense Director Maj. Gen Suleiman al-Amro.
Reportedly, a strong thunderstorm developed over Mecca at about 4 p.m. local time Friday, bringing gusty winds that shifted direction and caused the local temperature to drop from 42 to 25 degrees Celsius.
Khaled Al-Maeena, editor at large at the Saudi Gazette in Jeddah, said the storm was so strong it uprooted trees and broke window panes throughout Mecca. The crane fell between times the mosque is crowded with people, he said.
“Had it happened an hour later it would have been much worse,” he said. “Had it happened five hours earlier or four hours later, I think the death toll would have been more than a thousand.
Construction cranes surround the Grand Mosque, which is being enlarged to make the pilgrimage more manageable, he said.
“The irony is that all this expansion was being done for the welfare of the pilgrims,” he said.
The Grand Mosque is no stranger to tragedies, often because of the rush of people in Mecca for Hajj.
In 2006, a stampede killed at least 363 people. That stampede, like others in the past, happened during a stone-throwing ritual in which the pilgrims stone a symbolic devil.
Hundreds were killed in stampedes in 2004 and 1998 and 1,426 died in 1990.
