Over 700 people dead in Mecca hajj stampede

Saudi officials really need to rethink this stoning of the devil ritual. When you bring thousands of people together and work them up into frenzy--things will go horribly wrong.

From the New York Times:

At least 717 people were killed, and 863 were injured, in a stampede near Mecca, Saudi Arabia, on Thursday morning.

The deaths — at an intersection in Mina, about six miles east of the city — occurred around 9 a.m. on the first day of Eid al-Adha, one of the holiest holidays in the Muslim calendar, and as millions of Muslims were making their pilgrimage, or hajj, to Mecca.

It appeared to be the deadliest accident during the hajj since 1990, when 1,426 pilgrims perished in a stampede in a tunnel linking Mecca and Mina. And it occurred less than two weeks after a large construction crane toppled and crashed into the Grand Mosque in Mecca, killing at least 111 people and injuring 394 others.

Thursday’s stampede is likely to intensify fears that the kingdom does not have the transportation and public safety infrastructure to channel and protect what is the world’s largest regular human migration.