Six Indonesians killed in Mina stampede

Six Indonesians killed in Mina stampede

JAKARTA (JP): The government was still trying to determine
last night the identity of the six Indonesians reported to be
among the 270 pilgrims killed in this week's stampede in Mina,
near Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

Yesterday, Minister of Religious Affairs Tarmizi Taher ordered
the Indonesian embassy in Saudi Arabia and the Director for
Moslems and Haj Affairs who was in Riyadh, to investigate after
the Saudi government announced that six Indonesians were among
the victims.

Government officials, including those returning from Mecca,
said earlier that they were almost certain there were no
Indonesians among those who died during the stoning-of-the-devil
ritual.

"The minister asked the embassy, the consulate and the
director general to obtain the names of the six from official
sources in Saudi Arabia," the ministry said in a statement.

The Saudi government announced for the first time yesterday
the death toll for Monday's stampede which reached 270. Of that
number, 127 have been identified.

Reuter, quoting the Saudi government's official statement,
reported yesterday that among the 127 identified victims, there
were six Saudi Arabians, 11 Egyptians, two Sudanese, one Yemeni,
six Algerians, one Jordanian, one Moroccan, five Turks, eight
Nigerians, 18 Indians, six Bangladeshis, 44 Pakistanis, six
Indonesians, one Iranian, one Ghanaian, one Afghan, one Dutchman,
and one person from Mauritius and one from Denmark.

The incident occurred as hundreds of thousands of people
crowded into an enclosure at Mina where pilgrims hurl stones at
three piles of rocks symbolizing the devil.

The Saudi government blamed the incident on the pilgrims and
said their rush to hurl stones and the crowding was impossible to
control despite the efforts of policemen and warnings via
loudspeakers.

Severe crowding

"The crowds of hundreds of thousands ... ignored the
instructions given to them ... They all rushed, hurried to hurl
stones at the same time, competing to reach the rocks.

"Many of them were carrying their bags on their backs which
led to severe crowding ... so they started falling and
trampling," the statement said as quoted by Reuters.

Director General for Moslems and Haj Affairs H. Amidan, who is
among the Indonesian pilgrims in Saudi Arabia, told The Jakarta
Post by telephone yesterday that he was gathering information on
the reported death toll among Indonesians from hospitals and
other official sources.

He said "five or six" Indonesian pilgrims had failed to show
up in their hostels since Monday but added that such late returns
were "quite normal" for various reasons, such as the pilgrims
losing their way back.

He said he had received several names of Mina stampede victims
that the Saudi authorities said were Indonesians, but he was not
fully convinced this was accurate because their names did not
sound Indonesian. "Their names sounded like Sri Lankan," he said.

The worst tragedy in the annual haj pilgrimage occurred in
1990 when 1,400 people, including 650 Indonesians, were killed in
a stampede in a Mina pedestrian tunnel.

The Saudi Arabian kingdom has spent billions of dollars to
improve safety and has imposed quotas on Moslem countries to
limit the number of pilgrims and to ease overcrowding.

This year Indonesia sent a record high of 165,000 pilgrims to
Mecca. So far over 300 Indonesian pilgrims have been reported to
have died, mainly of illness, during this pilgrimage season.
(pan)