Heat kills 1,300 pilgrims at the Hajj
The pilgrimage falls in a Saudi summer, and temperatures reach 51.8C.
- When
- Known to
- ± 12 hours
- Era
- Contemporary, Holocene
- Where
- Mecca, Saudi Arabia · 21.4225° N, 39.8262° E
More than 1,300 people died during the Hajj in June 2024, most of them unregistered pilgrims without access to air-conditioned shelter along the route. The Islamic calendar is lunar, so the Hajj moves through the seasons and will fall in high summer through the 2020s. It is among the clearest cases of a religious obligation colliding with a warming climate.