Over two million pilgrims scale Mount Arafat

Walk of the faithful: Muslim pilgrims arriving at Mina to perform the ‘stoning of the devil’ ritual at the Jamarat Bridge during the Hajj pilgrimage, near Mecca. — AFP

Mount Arafat: Nearly 2.5 million Muslim haj pilgrims converged on Mount Arafat in Saudi Arabia, marshalled by tens of thousands of stewards in a bid to prevent any repetition of previous years’ deadly stampedes.

Movable crowd control barriers were erected all around the foot of the rocky hill outside Mecca, also known as Jabal al-Rahma or Mount of Mercy, where the faithful arrived on foot and in a seemingly endless line of buses on Saturday.