Meningitis outbreak kills 26 in northwest Nigeria, official says

COLOMBO: Saudi Arabia’s organization of this year’s Hajj has set a new standard in crowd management through the use of advanced technologies, Sri Lanka’s envoy said on Sunday, as hundreds of thousands of pilgrims started to return home.

In the 2025 Hajj season, almost 1.7 million people undertook the spiritual journey that is one of the tenets of Islam. More than 1.5 million arrived in the Kingdom from abroad, according to data from the General Authority for Statistics.

Pilgrims started to arrive in May, ahead of the main rituals which this year fell on June 6-10. Many have already departed for their countries of origin but special post-Hajj flights will continue to operate until mid-July.

The way the temporary influx of people has been handled by the Kingdom has “set a global benchmark in crowd management and smart innovation,” said Ameer Ajwad, Sri Lanka’s ambassador to the Kingdom, who this year was part of his country’s Hajj contingent.

Technology has played a key role in monitoring footage from more than 15,000 cameras installed in and around the holy city of Makkah.

The monitoring systems were designed to detect unusual crowd movements and anticipate bottlenecks in foot traffic to help prevent stampedes.

“The Kingdom set an exemplary global benchmark for crowd management by using AI-based crowd monitoring, predictive analytics as well as preventing unauthorized entries,” Ajwad told Arab News.

“Innovations by using advanced technologies such smart tents, digital tools and AI systems were also introduced to facilitate this year’s Hajj arrangements.”

More than 420,000 workers from the public and private sectors, including security services, served pilgrims during this year’s Hajj, GASTAT data shows.

The envoy highlighted the “tireless services rendered by the Saudi security and military officers, as well as guides and volunteers,” and extended gratitude to the Ministry of Health for “providing world-class healthcare services to the Hajj pilgrims (from) around the globe, including heart surgery for a Sri Lankan pilgrim.”

About 3,500 Sri Lankans took part in the pilgrimage this year. Muslims constitute about 10 percent of the 22 million population of the island nation, which is predominantly Buddhist.

MOSCOW: Russia on Sunday handed Ukraine another 1,200 bodies of Ukrainian soldiers killed in the war, Russian state news agencies reported on Sunday, saying Moscow had not received a single Russian corpse in return.

Russian state news agencies TASS and RIA both reported the handover, citing an unnamed source.

It is the fourth in a series of handovers of soldiers’ remains to take place in the past week, in accordance with an agreement reached between Russia and Ukraine at talks in Istanbul earlier this month.

Kyiv and Moscow agreed to each hand over as many as 6,000 bodies and to exchange sick and heavily wounded prisoners of war and those aged under 25.

Russia says it has so far handed Ukraine the bodies of nearly 5,000 Ukrainian service personnel, but has only reported receiving a total of 27 Russian servicemen in return.

Ukraine and Russia have conducted three exchanges of POWs so far, but have not disclosed exact numbers.