Bahraini young man dies in Makkah

Manama: Bahraini would-be pilgrims have laid to rest a fellow citizen who died in his sleep at a cemetery in Makkah.

Sayed Sadiq Sayed Hashem, 24, died on Saturday, a short time after performing Umrah, the smaller pilgrimage. Friends said that he was still wearing his ihram garments, consisting of two pieces of white sheet when he died in his sleep.

Efforts by a medical team in Makkah to rescue him failed and he passed away, they said.

According to the friends, Sayyed Sadiq, from Buri village in central Bahrain, was an affable and amicable person.

Pilgrimage (Haj) starts on Friday, but thousands of people from Bahrain and elsewhere have already reached Makkah, in the western part of Saudi Arabia, ahead of the annual event expected to be attended by more than two million people.