A stampede during the ritual stoning of pillars symbolising the devil left 244 worshippers trampled to death, Saudi officials co-ordinating the haj pilgrimage said yesterday.
The death toll is one of the highest in recent years for the annual ceremony, in which millions of Muslims retrace the journey of the prophet Mohammed.
Witnesses told of seeing at least 50 bodies lined up on the roadside. This year up to two million people converged on the area around the holy city of Mecca in western Saudi Arabia.
The tragedy occurred as pilgrims pushed forward towards the Jamarat bridge in Mina, near Mecca, to take part in the stoning ritual.
The head of haj security, Brig Ali Shoaby, said most of the dead were from east and south-east Asia - mainly from Indonesia, Bangladesh and Pakistan - but they included Arabs and other nationalities.
The ritual is a notoriously crowded one and some clerics disapprove of the activity, regarding it as un-Islamic. Last year 14 pilgrims were crushed there, and in 2001 35 were killed in a stampede. In 1998 119 pilgrims died near the same spot.
The biggest tragedy at the haj occurred in July 1990 when 1,426 pilgrims were killed in a stampede.
Muslims generally want to attend a haj at least once in their lifetime if they can afford it. Stoning the rock pillars is supposed to demonstrate the pilgrims' deep disdain for the devil. The pillars mark the site where the devil is said to have appeared to the biblical patriarch Abraham.