CAIRO: The number of death toll of Egyptian pilgrims in Mecca’s stampede, which killed more than 750 people, rose to 122, the Minister of Religious Endowment Mokhtar Gomaa told state-owned news agency MENA Thursday.
Gomaa, who is the head of the Egyptian delegation in Saudi Arabia, added to the agency that the number of injuries hit 16 pilgrims.
The number of missing Egyptian pilgrims in Hajj (meaning pilgrimage) declined from 80 to 73 after the mission was able to find some of them, the Egyptian delegation in Saudi Arabia announced Thursday.
Earlier Thursday, Saudi Arabia announced it had agreed to receive DNA samples from Egyptians whose relatives have been missing since Mecca’s stampede to compare them with the bodies of unidentified victims.
Right ahead of the pilgrimage season, more than 100 people were killed after a crane fell over them in the vicinity of the Holy Mosque; eight of them were Egyptians.