Tunisian President Kais Saied has fired the North African country’s religious affairs minister after 49 Tunisian pilgrims were confirmed dead at the annual Islamic Hajj in Saudi Arabia amid scorching heat.
Saied decided to terminate Ibrahim Chaibi’s duties, the official Tunisian news agency TAP reported on Friday, citing a presidential statement that provided no explanation.
The measure came shortly after Chaibi confirmed 49 deaths among Tunisian pilgrims, mainly due to high temperatures during rituals.
The deaths included 44 unregistered pilgrims who went on religious trips on tourist visas, Chaibi said.
It recognized the possibility of negligence in monitoring pilgrims, according to TAP.
The temperature in the Saudi city of Mecca and other nearby holy sites hovered around 50 degrees Celsius during the final day of the pilgrimage on Tuesday.
Videos circulating online allegedly showed Muslim pilgrims dead on Saudi Arabian roads after suffering heatstroke during the Hajj. So far, there has been no official Saudi comment.
Several Arab governments have said that most of the pilgrims who died in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, were unregistered and traveled on tourist visas, making it more difficult to find them or determine their real numbers.
Unregistered pilgrims generally do not have access to accommodation and transport services.
The Egyptian government is set to revoke licenses of 16 tour operators for organizing illegal Hajj trips, Egyptian media reported on Saturday, amid unconfirmed reports that most of the deaths among unregistered pilgrims were Egyptians.
Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouly ordered the withdrawal of operators’ licenses for fraud and their employees were referred for prosecution, state-linked Al-Qahera News TV reported.
Egypt’s official Hajj mission this year included more than 50,000 pilgrims and 31 deaths were recorded among them due to chronic illnesses, Madbouly said, according to the online edition of Egyptian state newspaper al-Ahram.
There has been no official word on deaths among the unregistered pilgrims.
“The pilgrims, who lost their lives during this crisis, are mostly not registered. The tourism companies, which organized their trips, did not provide them with any services,” said Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry at a meeting government about the crisis, according to Egyptian state television. .
Around 1.8 million pilgrims participated in this year’s Hajj.
One of the five pillars of Islam, Hajj is an obligatory duty that all Muslims must perform once in their lifetime, if they have the financial and physical means to do so.
