Hundreds of thousands of Muslims arrived at the “stoning of the devil” ritual on Saturday (September 2) for the second day of the annual haj pilgrimage.
Pilgrims threw stones at three walls at Jamarat in Mina, in one of the main rituals of the haj.
Authorities redesigned the Jamarat area after two stampedes, one in 2004 and one in 2006, killed hundreds of pilgrims, and the frequency of such disasters has been greatly reduced as the government spent billions of dollars upgrading and expanding haj infrastructure and crowd control technology.
Saudi Arabia has said that over 2 million pilgrims, most of them from outside Saudi Arabia, have arrived for the annual pilgrimage, a religious duty for every able-bodied Muslim who can afford the journey.