Two Million Muslim pilgrims ascend to Mona on Tuesday
Saudi Arabia-Regional, Religion, 1/18/2005

Amid intensive security measures, some two million Muslim pilgrims in al-Haj rituals will head on Tuesday to Mona in completion of these rituals which they had started in Mecca.

The pilgrims will spend today in tents before they ascend on Wednesday by buses or walking to Arafat Mountain ( the day of standing on Arafat) which is considered one of the basic rituals of al-Haj.

After their return back to Mecca they made sacrifices, following the steps of Prophet Abraham ( the father of prophets ) on the first day of al-Adha holiday which falls on Thursday before throwing fire for three days and farewell roaming around al-Kabaa.

Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims started to flow since the beginning of January on Mecca to perform al-Haj rituals while other huge number of Muslims all over the world could not.

The Saudi authorities did not permit huge number of Muslims al-Haj visas because of what it said an attempt to control the number of visitors and lessen incidents during the performing of the rituals.

In 2004, some 251 pilgrims died of incidents during the rituals. The Saudi authorities deployed 50,000 policemen to avoid any incident tha might trouble or violate the whole process.

Previous Stories:
  Saudi Arabia announces that Thursday is the first day of Eid al-Adha   (1/15/2005)
  Al-Haj rituals completed smoothly   (2/23/2002)
  Some 1.2 billion Muslims celebrate Eid al-Adha   (3/8/2001)

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