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- WORLD, Page 44World NotesSAUDI ARABIAPilgrims' Plight
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- The hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage to the holy cities of
- Mecca and Medina, may be spiritually uplifting, but it has
- often proved physically dangerous. The grim toll:
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- Last week: A chartered plane carrying 247 Muslims home to
- Nigeria crashed leaving Jidda, killing all aboard.
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- 1990: At least 1,426 were trampled to death or suffocated
- in a tunnel near the holy sites.
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- 1987: An attempt to quell Iranians staging a violent
- political protest against the U.S., the Soviet Union and Israel
- left 402 dead, 649 wounded in Mecca.
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- 1980: A jet departing from the Saudi capital of Riyadh
- caught fire when one of the passengers lighted a butane stove
- in an aisle to brew tea, killing 301, mostly Saudi Arabians and
- Pakistanis.
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- 1974: A chartered Dutch DC-8 ferrying 182 Indonesian
- pilgrims to Mecca crashed in Sri Lanka, resulting in their
- deaths.
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