“People were stumbling, falling, trying to get up. They were dehydrated, getting disorientated, they were dying in front of our eyes,” said Pietermaritzburg businessman Zaid Bayat by telephone from Mina.
“They were suffocating. We tried to help revive them, but for every person you were helping there 13, 14 others just falling down. It was very traumatic.”
Bayat said he believed the trouble began when a group of a few thousand turned, and in stifling heat, began moving against the flow of worshippers taking part in the Hajj’s last major rite near the holy Islamic city of Mecca.
“A group of people, maybe a few thousand, began moving back after they had performed a ritual. I think that is how it started. It was very difficult because there were people in wheelchairs in that group, and also in the rest moving forward, people in wheel chairs on both sides, so people started panicking.”
Bayat said in desperation some tried to climb over the perimeter and onto the roofs and into the tents of camps set up along the road.
