Saudi Arabia says 1,301 Muslim pilgrims died during the annual Hajj pilgrimage that ended earlier in June amid extreme heat.
About 83% of the fatalities were unregistered pilgrims, Saudi Health Minister Fahd al-Jaljel said on Sunday, without providing a list of their nationalities.
Temperatures in the Saudi city of Mecca and other nearby holy sites hovered around 50 degrees Celsius through the last day of pilgrimage on Tuesday.
“The unregistered pilgrims walked long distances under the sun without shelter and rest. Some of them were elderly and some others had chronic diseases,” al-Jaljel told Saudi state television al-Ekhbariya.
The official said the dead did not have identification cards, an issue that took time to identify them and contact their families.
Several Arab governments said most of the pilgrims who died in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, were unregistered and had traveled on tourist visas, rather than the required Hajj visas, making it harder to find them or their to determine the actual number.
Unregistered pilgrims generally do not have access to accommodation and transportation.
About 1.8 million pilgrims took part in the Hajj this year. The hajj, one of the five pillars of Islam, is an obligatory obligation that all Muslims must complete once in their lives, if they have the financial and physical means to do so.
