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OIC should adopt role of overseeing Hajj, says Iran

Politics Materials 26 September 2015 17:58 (UTC +04:00)
Islamic countries should swiftly join to discuss the Hajj stampede catastrophe and they should relegate the role of holding and overseeing the pilgrimage to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC)
OIC should adopt role of overseeing Hajj, says Iran

Tehran, Iran, September 26

By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:

Islamic countries should swiftly join to discuss the Hajj stampede catastrophe and they should relegate the role of holding and overseeing the pilgrimage to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), an Iranian MP has said.

The Saudi government should take responsibility for the disaster, MP Esmail Kosari told Trend September 26.

He added that Saudi Arabia is to blame for negligence that led to the bitter incident.

Kosari said the Saudi government didn't have enough security guards to maintain order over the Hajj ritual because it had sent its security forces to war to Yemen.

On the other hand, he added, the Saudi Defense Minister Salman Al Saud, son to King Salman, had decided to pass the area by, for which security forces had closed two gateways that would have let the pilgrims through, paving the way for a catastrophe like this, the Iranian MP noted.

The path was blocked because deputy crown prince Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud, the youngest defense minister in the world, 30 years old, has been escorted by over 340 military policemen. And this caused the people to be turned away from the small narrow route and began to avoid confronting this convoy.

Reportedly, they quickly flew the crown prince out and then put a silence on any reports that Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman was anywhere in the area.

The latest report on Iranian casualties of the disaster has confirmed 133 as dead, 99 injured, and 354 missing in the wake of September 24 stampede in the Mina area around Saudi Arabia's Mecca, Iran's Hajj and Pilgrimage Organization said September 26.

This year some 61,000 Iranian pilgrims are in Saudi Arabia for Hajj rituals.

Earlier this month, the pilgrims saw another deadly incident, the collapse of a construction crane in Mecca which killed more than 100 people and injured at least 200.

Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has declared three days of national mourning following the catastrophe.

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