Bodies of 12 other Iranian pilgrims listed as missing have been buried in Mecca, Saeed Ohadi said explaining that 17 other Iranians were buried in Saudi Arabia previously of which 12 had been identified while the other 5 were proved to be Iranians.
36 Iranians are still missing and the case is being followed by the Embassy of Iran in Riyadh, Consulate General of Iran in Jeddah as well as the Hajj and Pilgrimage Organization, he noted.
He added that the reports were obtained from the Saudi informatics systems.
Ohadi had told Press TV this morning that the organization under his watch has officially conveyed its objections to Riyadh over the burial of the Iranians in Saudi Arabia in written form.
He said the Saudi authorities had said that the burials were inevitably made due to hygienic concerns.
Ohadi said the burials were made even as legal proceedings had been completed for the return of some of the bodies buried.
The Iranian official also stressed that their places of burial are also “completely specified”.
The Hajj crush took place on September 24 after two large masses of pilgrims reached one another from opposite directions in Mina during the symbolic ceremony of the stoning of Satan in Jamarat.
Saudi Arabia has provided a death toll of nearly 770 from the incident. This is while only summing up the official tallies provided by some of the countries that lost victims in the incident provides a much larger figure. The Saudi government defiantly refuses to upgrade its figure, nonetheless.
Iran’s Hajj and Pilgrimage Organization says at least 4,700 people lost their lives in the tragedy.
The bodies of 399 Iranian victims have been repatriated so far.
PH/ 2941239
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