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Asharq Al-Awsat
Asharq Al-Awsat
World
Asharq Al-Awsat

Over 2 Million Pilgrims Perform Annual Hajj

Muslim worshipers watch as others circumambulate around the Kaaba at the Grand Mosque in Saudi Arabia's holy city of Makkah on August 17, 2018. (AFP)

Saudi Arabia announced on Monday that over 2 million pilgrims from around the world performed this year’s annual Hajj pilgrimage.

A total of 2,371,675 pilgrims traveled to Makkah to perform the Hajj rituals, said the General Authority for Statistics.

A total of 612,953 internal pilgrims were reported, while 1,758,722 pilgrims came from abroad the Kingdom.

Male pilgrims totaled 1,327,127 and females accounted for 1,044,548 of the pilgrims.

Pilgrims from the Gulf Cooperation Council made up 1.9 percent of the pilgrims. The remaining Arab countries accounted to 22.5 percent of the pilgrims.

Pilgrims from Asia, excluding the Arab world, accounted to 59.7 percent of this year’s worshipers.

A total of 166,083 pilgrims, or 9.5 percent, came from Africa, excluding its Arab countries. European pilgrims accounted for 5 percent of the total number of worshipers.

Pilgrims from North and South America and Australia made up the remaining 24,992 worshipers or 1.4 percent.

For external pilgrims, 1,656,936 arrived in the Kingdom by air, 85,623 arrived by land and 16,163 by sea.

Over 287,300 employees working at security, private and public agencies operated the services provided to the pilgrims upon their arrival at the holy sites.

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