2,177 Dead in Hajj Stampede including 20 Tanzanians

   DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - The crush and stampede that struck the hajj last month in Saudi Arabia killed at least 2,177 pilgrims, a new Associated Press tally showed Monday, after officials in the kingdom met to discuss the tragedy.

   The toll keeps rising from the Sept. 24 disaster outside Mecca as individual countries identify bodies and work to determine the whereabouts of hundreds of pilgrims still missing. The official Saudi toll of 769 people killed and 934 injured has not changed since Sept. 26, and officials have yet to address the discrepancy.

   Crown Prince Mohammed bin Naif bin Abdul Aziz, who is also the kingdom's interior minister, oversaw a meeting late Sunday about the disaster in Mina, according to the official Saudi Press Agency. The agency's report did not mention any official response to the rising death toll.

   "The crown prince was reassured on the progress of the investigations," the SPA report said. "He directed the committee's members to continue their efforts to find the causes of the accident, praying to Allah Almighty to accept the martyrs and wishing the injured a speedy recovery."

   King Salman ordered the investigation into the disaster, the deadliest in the history of the annual pilgrimage. It came after a crane collapse in Mecca earlier that month killed 111 worshippers, and the twin disasters marred the first hajj to be overseen by the king since he ascended to the throne at the start of this year.

Hajj Pilgrims

   The Saudi king holds the title of "Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques," and the monarchy's supervision of the hajj is a source of great prestige in the Muslim world. Riyadh has rejected a suggestion by Shiite power Iran, its main regional rival, to have an independent body take over planning and administering the five-day hajj pilgrimage, which is required of all able-bodied Muslims once in their lifetimes.

   Iran has repeatedly blamed the disaster on the Saudi royal family, accusing it of mismanagement and of covering up the real death toll, which Tehran says exceeds 4,700, without providing evidence.

   "The lying and hypercritical bodies, which claim to (be promoting) human rights, as well as the Western governments, which sometimes make great fuss over the death of a single person, remained dead silent in this incident in favor of their allied government," Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Monday, according to a transcript on his website.

Bodies of Hajj Stampede Victims

   "If they were sincere, these self-proclaimed advocates of human rights should have demanded accountability, compensation, guarantee for non-recurrence and punishment for the perpetrators of this catastrophe."

   Iran and Saudi Arabia are deeply divided on a host of regional issues and back opposite sides in the wars in Syria and Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition has been at war with Iran-backed Shiite rebels, known as Houthis, since March.

   Saudi Arabia has meanwhile been targeted in gun and bomb attacks by an affiliate of the extremist Islamic State group, which holds a third of Iraq and Syria in its self-declared "caliphate." Like al-Qaida before it, the IS group views the Saudi royal family as illegitimate because of alleged corruption and its alliance with the United States.

   The AP count of the dead from the Mina crush and stampede comes from state media reports and officials' comments from 30 of the over 180 countries that sent citizens to the hajj.

   Iran leads all the affected countries, saying it had 465 pilgrims killed. Many of the dead also came from Africa. Mali said it lost 254 people, while Nigeria lost 199, Cameroon lost 76, Niger lost 72, Senegal lost 61, and Ivory Coast and Benin both lost 52.

   Others include Egypt with 182, Bangladesh with 137, Indonesia with 126, India with 116, Pakistan with 102, Ethiopia with 47, Chad with 43, Morocco with 36, Algeria with 33, Sudan with 30, Burkina Faso with 22, Tanzania with 20, Somalia with 10, Kenya with eight, Ghana and Turkey with seven, Myanmar and Libya with six, China with four, Afghanistan with two and Jordan and Malaysia with one.

   The previous deadliest-ever incident at hajj was a 1990 stampede that killed 1,426 people.

Afisa Uhamiaji Asimamishwa Kazi Kwa Kukaa Vibaya Kazini!

  http://www.arabnews.com/news/458770

JEDDAH: Saudi authorities arrested a local airport officer after social networks published a picture of the man showing him in a “rude sitting position” while checking the passports of passengers, a newspaper reported on Sunday.


The picture, which was captured by a Saudi passenger at the airport in Jeddah, showed the uniformed officer giving his back to the passengers as he sat on the desk and his legs rested on a chair.

Newspapers had earlier said the unnamed officer was suspended this week after the photograph triggered online criticism by hundreds of viewers.

“The passport officer was ordered arrested after his suspension this week ... the director of the passports department ordered his arrest for questioning about his behavior and uncivilized way of sitting,” the Arabic language daily Arar said.

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The Saudi Immigration Sitting in a Rude Position



Waarabu Kutoka Saudia Wakamatwa Kuhusiana na Mlipuko wa Bomu Kanisani Arusha!

Waarabu wanne kutoka Saudi Arabia na WaTanzania wanne wamekamatwa na kushikiliwa na polisi kwa tuhuma za kuhusika na mlipuko wa bomu katika kanisa katoliki mjini Arusha jumapili. Watu wawili wamepoteza maisha yao na watu 60 kuumia.  Balozi wa Vatican nchini Tanzania, alikuwepo katika hapo kanisani, lakini hakuumia.

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Kutoka Reuters:

.DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) - Tanzania has arrested four men from Saudi Arabia and four Tanzanians in connection with the bombing of church on Sunday that killed two people, an attack that has heightened sectarian tensions in the east African nation.


Investigators said they were still determining the type of device used in the attack on the Catholic church in Arusha, a town in the north of the nation of about 45 million people that is roughly evenly split between Muslims and Christians.

A statement from President Jakaya Kikwete's office on Monday said two people had now died from the blast after the death toll had previously been put at one. Sixty people were injured.

The Vatican's ambassador to Tanzania, Archbishop Francisco Montecillo Padilla, was attending the official opening of the church when the explosion occurred. He escaped unharmed.

"So far eight people have been arrested, including four nationals from Saudi Arabia and four Tanzanians," Arusha Regional Commissioner Magesa Mulongo told Reuters by telephone.

He said the Saudis, aged between 30 and 45, had arrived at an airport near Arusha on Saturday and were detained late on Sunday trying to cross the border to neighboring Kenya. Mulongo said they were being questioned regarding the incident.

Arusha lies near the snow-capped peak of Mount Kilimanjaro in a part of Tanzania that is predominantly Christian.

Highlighting tensions between the religious communities, two Christian leaders were killed in Tanzania's semi-autonomous, predominantly Muslim islands of Zanzibar earlier this year and there have been attacks on Muslim leaders and mosques.

"We are trying to establish if it was a home-made explosive device or a specialized bomb," Tanzania's director of criminal investigation, Robert Manumba, told Reuters.

The president's office said Kikwete had cut short his state visit to Kuwait following the bomb attack on the church.

(Reporting by Fumbuka Ng'wanakilala; Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Alison Williams)

Rais wa Tunisia Akimbia na Kuacha Madaraka!!

Rais Ben Ali

Duh! Yaani zamani ilikuwa kawaida kusikia rais kapinduliwa na damu imemwagwa. Yule Sylvanus Olympio wa Togo aliruka geti ya ubalozi fulani kabla ya kupigwa risasi. Thomas Sanakara wa Burkina Faso alipiwa risasi usingizini. Sasa inaelekea kuna mtindo mpya, kupanda ndege na kutangaza hutarudi nchini kwako.

Rais Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, aliyeongoza Tunisia katika siasa za Chama Kimoja kwa miaka 23, hivi sasa yuko Saudi Arabia ambako inasemekana amepokelewa kwa shangwe na mfalme wa huko. Awali alikimbilia Ufaransa lakini walimrudisha wakisema hawamtaki. Tunisia ilikuwa koloni ya wafaransa.

Siku za hivi karibuni wananchi wa Tunisia walichachamaa kutokana na hali mbaya ya uchumi na ukosefu wa ajira. Walichochewa baaada ya mwanaume ambaye alikuwa msomi lakini kashindwa kupata kazi, alijichoma moto baada ya polisi kumnyang'anya kigari chake ambacho alikuwa anatumia kuuza matunda.

Tunisia iko Afrika Kaskazini. Wananchi wake wanajiita waarabu.

Kwa habari zaisi someni:

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/01/15/tunisia.protests/