107 people killed as crane crashes in Mecca's Grand Mosque

At least 107 people were killed and 238 more were injured when a crane collapsed on to the Grand Mosque during storms in the Muslim holy city of Mecca on Friday, the Saudi Arabian government has said.

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The country’s civil defence authority said on its Twitter account that rescue teams had been sent to the scene. It said stormy weather was to blame for the tragedy and offered its “sincere condolences” over the deaths and its prayers for speedy recoveries for those injured.

In a tweet, the authority added that its authority’s director general Suleiman al-Amr attended the scene of the disaster.

Pictures circulating on social media, which the Guardian could not independently verify and which were too graphic to reproduce, showed what appeared to be numerous bodies on the ground - as well as bloodied, injured people being helped the scene.

They showed a large group of people lying on polished tiled flooring, most of them near to a wall and surrounded by rubble and other debris. One man appears to be being wheeled out of the building on a wheelchair.

Other images posted on the same account appeared to show parts of a crane that crashed through the roof of a building.

Abdel Aziz Naqoor, who said he works at the mosque, told Agence France-Presse that he saw the crane fall after being hit by the storm.

“If it weren’t for al-Tawaf bridge the injuries and deaths would have been worse,” he said, referring to a covered walkway that surrounds the Kaaba and broke the crane’s fall.

Source: The Guardian(UK.)