Makkah: Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud vowed yesterday to find out what caused a crane collapse that killed 107 people at Makkah’s Grand Mosque.
“We will investigate all the reasons and afterwards declare the results to the citizens,” he said after visiting the site.
The official Saudi Press Agency said King Salman “discussed the causes of the accident and its effects on the Holy Mosque” after he saw where the massive crane came down during a vicious thunderstorm on Friday.
It was one of several cranes working on an expansion of the sprawling mosque. The incident occurred as hundreds of thousands of pilgrims from around the world have already arrived in Makkah for the annual Hajj pilgrimage. The dead included Indians and Indonesians. SPA said King Salman expressed his condolences to the families of the dead, and then visited a local hospital “to check on the health of the injured who are from several nationalities including Iranian, Turkish, Afghan, Egyptian and Pakistani.”
Meanwhile, General Suleiman Al Amr, director general of the Civil Defence Authority, told Saudi-owned Al Arabiya TV yesterday, “Heavy rain and strong winds of unusually high speed led to the uprooting of trees, the fall of panels and the collapse of the crane.”
The number of deaths may increase, Al Amr said. Many of the 238 people injured in the accident were only lightly wounded, he said. Makkah Governor Prince Khaled Al Faisal has ordered an investigation into the incident, Al Arabiya said.
An unnamed Saudi official involved in organising the Hajj was quoted by Al Arabiya as saying the pilgrimage would go ahead as planned. “The incident won’t affect the pilgrimage this year and repairs to the damaged section (of the mosque) will begin within days,” the official said.
But an engineer for the Saudi Binladin Group, the developer, said the crane had been installed in “an extremely professional way” and that there had been no technical problem. “It was an act of God”, he said.
Saudi Binladin Group belongs to the family of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Agencies
