Stampede at Muslim ritual kills at least 345

MINA, Saudi Arabia –Thousands of Muslims surging to complete a stoning ritual before sunset stampeded Thursday after some pilgrims tripped over dropped luggage, causing a pileup that killed at least 345 people in the second tragedy to hit this year’s hajj.

The stampede came a week after another hajj disaster – the Jan. 5 collapse of a building being used as a pilgrims’ hotel that killed 76 people in Mecca.

In the stoning ritual, all the pilgrims must pass a series of three “pillars” called al-Jamarat, which represent the devil and which the faithful pelt with stones to purge themselves of sin.

The site in the desert of Mina outside the holy city of Mecca is a notorious bottleneck in the weeklong pilgrimage and has seen deadly incidents in seven of the past 17 years, including a stampede in 1990 that killed 1,426 people.

“I heard screaming and … saw people jumping over each other,” said Suad Abu Hamada, an Egyptian pilgrim. “Police starting pulling out bodies. The bodies were piled up. I couldn’t count them, they were too many.”