Mecca hotel collapse death toll at 76

Rescue workers searching for signs of life at a four-story building that collapsed in Mecca, Islam’s holiest city, ended their operation yesterday, having found no new survivors.

The Saudi Interior Ministry revised the death toll from Thursday’s collapse to 76, with 62 injured. Earlier the ministry said 53 people had died. The nationalities of the victims have not been released.

The disaster marred the start of the annual gathering of millions for the hajj pilgrimage that begins on Monday. More than one million attended Friday prayers in the Grand Mosque, which is just 200 feet away the building that collapsed.

Yesterday afternoon, about 24 hours after the collapse, the workers called off the search for survivors in the rubble of the building, which had shops and restaurants and was used as a hotel during the hajj.

Hundreds of men had worked through Thursday night, under spotlights and with cranes, to remove huge slabs of concrete, occasionally stopping to use microphones to listen for survivors. While people were rescued on Thursday, the workers found nobody alive yesterday.

“Fortunately the building was almost empty when it collapsed, because most of the residents were in the holy shrine,” civil defence Maj. Gen. Alwani, who did not provide his first name, told state-run Al-Ekhbariya television. “Most of the casualties were from the passers-by.”

An unidentified government official told Al-Ekhbariya that the 40-year-old building’s foundations were cracked and weak.

However, the operator of the hotel, Habib Turkestani, a relative of the Saudi owner, said that the structure was 25 years old and safe.

“What happened was a matter of fate and divine decree,” Turkestani said.

He said the hotel guests included 18 French citizens of Tunisian origin, four British nationals of Bangladeshi origin, and four people from the United Arab Emirates. Other victims are believed to be from Indonesia.

Tunisia said that four of its nationals were killed while in Cairo the Interior Ministry said no Egyptian nationals were among the dead.

The injured were treated in hospitals in Mecca and Jiddah, about 40 miles to the east.

The Prophet Mohammed was born in Mecca and the courtyard of its Grand Mosque contains the Kaaba, a large cubic stone structure that Muslims around the world face during their daily prayers.

The hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam that Muslims are obliged to undertake at least once in their lifetime if they can afford it. The other pillars are to profess that there is only one god and Mohammed is his prophet, to pray five times daily, to give alms and to fast during the holy month of Ramadan.

The number of pilgrims to Mecca has increased elevenfold over the past 15 years. During that time, the Saudi government has spent billions of dollars to improve accommodation, transportation and medical facilities for the “guests of Allah.”

The hajj has suffered numerous tragedies in recent years. The worst was in 1990 when 1,426 pilgrims were killed in a stampede in an overcrowded tunnel leading to a holy site in Mecca.

On the hajj’s final day in 2004, 251 people were trampled to death when the crowd panicked during the stoning of the devil ritual.