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At least 52 killed as crane crashes into Grand Mosque in Mecca 65 killed as crane crashes in Mecca's Grand Mosque
(35 minutes later)
At least 52 people were killed when a crane crashed in Mecca’s Grand Mosque on Friday, Saudi Arabia’s civil defence authority said on its Twitter account.It said 30 people were injured. At least 65 people were killed and a further 154 were injured when a crane collapsed at the Grand Mosque in the Muslim holy city of Mecca on Friday, the Saudi Arabian government has said.
The Muslim annual Haj pilgrimage is due later this month and Saudi authorities go to great lengths to be prepared for the millions of Muslims who converge on Mecca. Related: Mecca crane crash: more than 50 dead at Grand Mosque - live
Last year, the kingdom reduced the numbers permitted to perform haj for safety reasons because of construction work to enlarge the Grand Mosque. The civil defence authority said on its Twitter account that rescue teams had been sent to the scene.
مباشرة مدير عام الدفاع المدني الفريق سليمان العمرو لحادث سقوط رافعة في الحرم المكي بـ #العاصمة_المقدسة. pic.twitter.com/aeVrlSi547
The annual hajj pilgrimage is due later this month and Saudi authorities go to great lengths to be prepared for the millions of Muslims who converge on Mecca.
Pictures circulating on social media, which the Guardian could not independently verify and which were too graphic to reproduce, showed what appeared to be numerous bodies on the ground - as well as bloodied, injured people being helped.
Other images posted by the same account appeared to show parts of a crane that had crashed through the roof of a building.
Saudi authorities have taken a series of safety measures over the past decade aimed at preventing crowd crushes, such as the stampede that took place in 2006, which killed 350 people. A building collapse the same year killed 76, while another stampede killed more than 200 in 2004.
Officials limited numbers attending the Hajj after a peak in 2013, in which more than 3.1 million pilgrims arrived. Bottlenecks in which crushes had occurred along the pilgrimage route were widened and religious authorities decreed that it was not mandatory for pilgrims to touch sacred spots.
Reconstruction work to enlarge the Grand Mosque has continued for the past two years and was expected to be largely completed ahead of this year’s pilgrimage, which begins in less than two weeks.