Religious fanatics killed Afghanistan’s transport minister

Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims from all over the world travel to Saudi Arabia, to Mecca, to the holy Caaba, Allah’s first temple on Earth. It is believed that each Muslim man and woman must do this pilgrimage at least once in a lifetime.

In spite of the fact that the pilgrimage to the holy places is rather expensive (the pilgrims have to pay $1.5 thousand for the twenty days of the trip, which means a fortune for a lot of them), but the money does not stop anyone. The blind desire to see the holy places sometimes ends up in the tragedy for a lot of the pilgrims.

A crowd of the pilgrims, heading for Saudi Arabia, was lynching Afghanistan’s Minister for Transport, Abdul Rahman in the Kabul airport. The Muslims were outraged because of the time that they had wasted, waiting for the transport for several days running. Hundreds of the pilgrims went for the minister, when he showed up at the airport. They decided that the minister was going to use the plane that was meant for them, so they squeezed the security and lacerated the minister. “The minister is dead, he was killed by the infuriated pilgrims that were going to Mecca, - deputy supervisor of Kabul’s security service, general Khalil Omed said.

The government held a special session right after the incident happened. The conclusions and decisions of that session are expected to be revealed today. Afghanistan’s Defense Minister Mohammad Fahim stopped his visit to Moscow and left for Kabul, where he is currently participating in the urgent session of the Cabinet of Ministers of Afghanistan.

The Afghan pilgrims barricaded themselves in the Kabul airport, after they had killed the minister. The pilgrims reportedly ask for negotiations with the government. The police informed, no one was arrested yet.

Unfortunately, that death was not the last one. The first day of the pilgrimage to the holy places of Islam in Mecca, started with two incidents, which took away the lives of 40 people. The first tragedy happened on Wednesday in the east of Saudi Arabia, when a bus with pilgrims ran into a truck, killing 37 passengers from Pakistan, Syria, Egypt. As the Saudi law-enforcement bodies explained, the reason of such a large number of the killed people was the fire, which started as a result of the accident. The second catastrophe happened on the north of Saudi Arabia, where a bus with the Egyptian pilgrims turned over itself due to the bad weather conditions. One person died in the accident and 60 were injured.

Dmitry Litvinovich PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov