Cairo: The death toll among Egyptian pilgrims in last month’s Haj stampede in Saudi Arabia has risen to 181, an Egyptian minister has said.
Minister of Waqfs (Religious Endowments) Mohammad Jumma added late Sunday that 53 other Egyptian pilgrims are still unaccounted for. “The ministry will release a detailed list of names of the dead and the missing on its website shortly,” Jumaa said, according to the official Middle East News Agency.
His remarks came hours after the Foreign Ministry reported 177 Egyptian deaths in the September 24 tragedy that occurred in the Saudi holy city of Mina.
Last week, Egyptian state-run hospitals started taking DNA samples from relatives of the stampede victims to help identify them amid accusations that the government has been slow in providing information on the dead and the missing, and in contacting their families.
Iran has already said that 464 of its nationals perished in the incident, which apparently happened when two massive waves of pilgrims converged on a narrow street during a major ritual of the annual Muslim pilgrimage.
Saudi authorities have put the overall death toll at 769 pilgrims without providing a breakdown of their nationalities. The estimate makes it the worst Haj disaster in 25 years.
