Pilgrims begin the final rites of Hajj as Muslims celebrate Eid al-Adha

Masses of pilgrims on Sunday embarked on a symbolic stoning of the devil in Saudi Arabia in the fierce summer heat. The ritual marks the final days of the Hajj, or Islamic pilgrimage, and the start of Eid al-Adha celebrations for Muslims around the world.

Stoning is among the final rites of the Hajj, which is one of the Five Pillars of Islam. It came a day after more than 1.8 million pilgrims gathered on a sacred hill, known as Mount Ararat, outside the holy city of Mecca, which Muslim pilgrims visit to perform the annual five-day Hajj rituals.

Pilgrims left Mount Arafat on Saturday night to spend the night at a nearby site known as Muzdalifa, where they collected pebbles to use in the symbolic stoning of pillars representing the devil.

The pillars are at another holy site in Mecca called Mina, where Muslims believe Ibrahim’s faith was tested when God ordered him to sacrifice his only son, Ismail. Ibrahim was prepared to submit to the order, but then God stayed his hand, sparing his son. In the Christian and Jewish versions of the story, Abraham is ordered to kill his other son, Isaac.

On Sunday morning, crowds headed to the stoning areas on foot. Some were seen pushing disabled pilgrims in wheelchairs on a multi-lane road leading to the complex housing the large pillars. Most of the pilgrims were seen suffocating and carrying umbrellas to protect them from the scorching summer sun.

An Associated Press reporter saw many pilgrims, especially among the elderly, collapsing on the way to the pillars because of the scorching heat. Security forces and medics were mobilized to help, transporting those who collapsed on stretchers, protected from the heat, to ambulances or field hospitals. As the temperature rose midday, more people needed medical help. The heat reached 47°C (116.6°F) in Mecca and 46°C (114.8°F) in Mina, according to Saudi meteorological authorities.

Despite the suffocating heat, many pilgrims expressed joy at being able to complete their pilgrimage.

“Thank God, (the process) was joyful and good,” said Abdel-Moaty Abu Ghoneima, an Egyptian pilgrim. “Nobody wants more than that.”

Many pilgrims will spend up to three days in Mina, each throwing seven stones at three pillars in a ritual to symbolize the elimination of evil and sin.

While in Mina, they will visit Mecca to perform their “tawaf,” or circumambulation, which wraps around the Kaaba in the Grand Mosque counterclockwise seven times. Then another circumambulation, the Farewell Tawaf, will mark the end of the Hajj as the pilgrims prepare to leave the holy city.

The rites coincide with the four-day Eid al-Adha, which means “Feast of Sacrifice”, when financially well-off Muslims commemorate Ibrahim’s test of faith through the slaughter of cattle and animals and the distribution of the meat to the poor.

Most countries marked Eid al-Adha on Sunday. Others, like Indonesia, will celebrate on Monday.

Once the Hajj is over, men are expected to shave their heads and remove the white shroud-like clothing worn during the pilgrimage, and women are expected to cut a lock of their hair as a sign of renewal and rebirth.

Most pilgrims then leave Mecca for the city of Medina, about 340 kilometers (210 miles) away, to pray at the Prophet Muhammad’s tomb, the Holy Chamber. The tomb is part of the prophet’s mosque, one of the three holiest sites in Islam, along with the Grand Mosque in Mecca and the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

All Muslims are required to perform Hajj once in their lifetime if they are physically and financially able to do so. Many wealthy Muslims make the pilgrimage more than once. The rituals largely commemorate the accounts of the prophet Ibrahim and his son, the prophet Ismail, Ismail’s mother, Hajar, and the prophet Muhammad, according to the Quran, the holy book of Islam.

More than 1.83 million Muslims will perform Hajj in 2024, Saudi Minister of Hajj and Umrah Tawfiq bin Fawzan al-Rabiah said in a briefing, slightly less than last year’s figures when 1.84 million performed the rituals.

Most Hajj rituals are performed outdoors, with little or no shade. It is scheduled for the second week of Dhu al-Hijjah, the last month of the Islamic lunar calendar, so the time of year varies. And this year the pilgrimage took place in the scorching summer of Saudi Arabia.

This year’s Hajj was set against the backdrop of the devastating Israel-Hamas Warthat pushed the Middle East to the brink of regional conflict.

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip were unable to travel to Mecca for Hajj this year due to the closure of the Rafah crossing in May, when Israel extended its ground offensive into the city on the border with Egypt. And they will not be able to celebrate Eid al-Adha as they used to in previous years.

Dozens of Palestinians gathered on Sunday morning near a destroyed mosque in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis to perform Eid prayers. They were surrounded by debris and rubble from collapsed houses. In the neighboring city of Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza, Muslims held their prayers in a shelter converted into a school. Some, including women and children, went to cemeteries to visit the graves of loved ones.

“Today, after the ninth month, more than 37,000 martyrs, more than 87,000 injured and hundreds of thousands of homes have been destroyed,” Abdulhalim Abu Samra, a displaced Palestinian, told the AP after ending prayers in Khan Younis. “Our people live in difficult circumstances.”

Also in the occupied West Bank, Palestinians gathered for Eid prayers in Ramallah, the headquarters of the Western-backed Palestinian Authority. “We suffer a lot and live difficult times with (what is happening to) our brothers in Gaza,” said Mahmoud Mohana, an imam of a mosque.

In Yemen’s Houthi-controlled capital Sanaa and Iraq’s capital Baghdad, Muslims celebrated and prayed for war-weary Palestinians in Gaza.

“We are happy because of Eid, but our hearts are filled with anguish when we see our brothers in Palestine,” said Bashar al-Mashhadani, imam of the al-Gilani mosque in Baghdad. “(We) call on Arab and Islamic countries to support them and stand with them in this ordeal.”

In Lebanon, where the militant group Hezbollah negotiated almost daily attacks with Israel, a steady stream of visitors headed to the Palestine Martyrs’ Cemetery near Beirut’s Shatila Palestinian refugee camp on Sunday morning, carrying flowers and jugs of water for the graves of their loved ones, an annual tradition on the first day of Eid.

The cemetery is the burial site of many Palestine Liberation Organization leaders and militants who died fighting Israeli forces in Lebanon in the 1970s and 1980s. More recently, senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri and two other members of Hamas, killed with him in an apparent Israeli airstrike in the southern suburbs of Beirut in January, were buried there.