Staff Reporter :
State Minister for Foreign Affairs M Shahriar Alam on Monday said that the death toll of Bangladeshi hajis in the tragic stampede in Saudi Arabia’s Mina now reached 137. “Out of total dead in Mina, 153 hajis have been identified as Bangladeshi nationals. Of them identities of 96 are verified,” he said while addressing a press briefing at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Sunday.
The State Minister said, fifty three other Bangladeshi hajis are still missing. The officials of Hajj Mission still could not trace them. 10 far we know, several hajis are still undergoing treatment in different hospitals of Saudi Arabia.
Meanwhile, the Bangladesh Ambassador in Saudi Arabia Golam Moshih yesterday also confirmed that the death toll of Bangladeshi hajis now climbed to 137. “But the number of deaths may increase as 53 hajis are still missing,” he said.
Referring to Hajj Office, the Ambassador said, of the 96 identified dead, the burials of 55 have already been completed in Saudi Arabia. Now, the process is going on to identify 41 other Bangladesh hajis.
“To confirm the identities of decomposed bodies, the Saudi Government is now conducting DNA test taking sample from the victim’s close relatives. In this regard, the Bangladesh government has urged the close relatives of the missing hajis, who are now residing in the kingdom, to provide their DNA sample,” he said.
Recently, the Secretary of Religious Affairs Ministry Chowdhury Md Babul Hassan said that Saudi government did not allow any country, except Iran, to bring back the bodies of hajis. The statements of State Minister for Foreign Affairs M Shahriar Alam and Bangladesh Ambassador in Saudi Arabia Golam Moshih came yesterday at a time when family members of missing Bangladeshi hajis have been demanding accurate information about the casualties in the tragic incident, which cost over 769 lives so far.
Not only that, the death toll in Mina tragedy is still not acceptable to several other countries like Iran, Pakistan and India. About 769 hajis of different countries were killed in the stampede on Road No-204 when they gathered there to stoning Satan [Devil], a symbolic ritual of Hajj.
But Iran said the number of death in stampede was over 2000. Besides, the death lists provided by Saudi Arabia to India and Pakistan listed the number of death as 1100 and 1200 respectively. It is still not clear how many Bangladeshi hajis have been injured in the incident while about 934 [of different countries] were injured in the stampede.
Officials said about 1, 06,000 pilgrims went to Saudi Arabia from Bangladesh this year to perform Hajj. The Bangladesh government sent a team of 350 officials, including physicians and nurses, to look after the hajis. All of them went there with government expenditures.
The Bangladeshi hajis openly alleged that they did not get sufficient information from the Hajj Office after the accident.
