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MECCA, Saudi Arabia (AP) -- Muslim pilgrims have been streaming into Saudi Arabia's holy city of Mecca ahead of the start of the Hajj later this week, as the annual pilgrimage returns to its monumental scale.
Saudi officials say more than 1.5 million foreign pilgrims have arrived in the country by Tuesday, the vast majority by air, from across the world. More are expected, and hundreds of thousands of Saudis and others living in Saudi Arabia will also join them when the pilgrimage officially begins today.
Saudi officials have said they expect the number of pilgrims this year to exceed those in 2023, when more than 1.8 million people performed Hajj, approaching pre-pandemic levels. In 2019, more than 2.4 million Muslims made the pilgrimage. Saudi authorities control the flow of pilgrims through quotas, allowing each country one pilgrim for every thousand Muslim citizens.
The pilgrims included 4,200 Palestinians from the occupied West Bank who arrived in Mecca earlier this month, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Awqaf and Religious Affairs. Palestinians in the Gaza Strip were not able to travel to Saudi Arabia for Hajj this year, because of the 8-month Israeli offensive in Gaza.
"We are praying for Palestine to be free and (for Palestinians) to liberate their land and to be like other nations, to live in peace and not always to have war," said Ibrahim al-Hadhari, an Algerian pilgrim, as he was standing in the Grand Mosque court waiting for evening prayers.
On Tuesday, pilgrims thronged the Grand Mosque in Mecca, performing a ritual circuit walking seven times around the Kaaba, the cube-shaped structure inside the mosque that is considered Islam's holiest site. They wore ihrams, two unstitched sheets of white cloth that resemble a shroud.
Many were seen sweating heavily from the burning sun, Others were carrying umbrellas against the sun as temperatures reached 107 degrees Fahrenheit and 113 F during the day on Tuesday and Wednesday respectively.
"I was relieved when I arrived at the Al-Masjid Al-Haram and saw the Kaaba," said Rabeia al-Raghi, a Moroccan woman who came to Mecca for Hajj along with her husband and their daughter. "I am very happy."
Mohammad Abdel-Baset, an Iraqi pilgrim, said he was overjoyed to perform Hajj.
"We congratulate the great crowd and thank God for gathering us from all regions, globally and not from the Arab world only, from all the global Muslim regions (who) came to the Grand Mosque," said Abdel-Baset, a lawyer from Baghdad.