With additional reporting by Ahmad Al-Zawaty, IOL correspondent

KURDISTAN, January 30 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - More than 765,000 Muslim pilgrims have arrived in Saudi Arabia for next month’s hajj pilgrimage to the city of Mecca, Islam’s holiest site.

Meanwhile, the pilgrims tribes started to leave the Kurdistan Iraq on Tuesday, January 28, through Baghdad and Tehran heading Mecca.

Up until Tuesday, 719,000 pilgrims arrived by plane, 35,300 by land and 10,800 by sea, according to Major-General Abdul Aziz Sajini, head of the kingdom’s passports department, quoted by the official SPA news agency.

Among the arrivals are 5,000 Iraqi pilgrims who crossed the Arar border post in northern Saudi Arabia.

Some 17,000 Iraqi pilgrims are expected to perform the hajj this year, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

Kurdistan Iraq Pilgrims Leave for Mecca

The Kurd pilgrims started to leave Kurdistan on Tuesday traveling through Baghdad and Tehran heading to Mecca to perform hajj.

The number of Kurds who are traveling from Iraq amounted to 1,800 pilgrims, while there are 1,500 Kurd pilgrims traveling from Iran.

“In 1997 the hajj voyage started through Iran after facilities were provided by the Iranian authorities to the Kurdish parties,” the imam of Qader Bek, Sheikh Anwar Mohamed, an Iranian heading one of the pilgrim groups, told IslamOnline.

“In the last two years traveling through Iran was considered an official matter for the Ministry for Islamic Endowments and Islamic Affairs in Kurdistan,” he added.

He pointed out that the number of pilgrims who travel through Iran increased this year.

As for pilgrims traveling to Mecca through Baghdad, Anwar Mohamed said that most people prefer going to Mecca through Baghdad, because it is easier, and takes less time than traveling from Iran which takes more than month, since the Iranian groups remain in Medina after finishing hajj.

“Kurds would love to perform hajj but the Iraqi government makes it difficult as it is not allowed for people above 65 years, women or men, to travel, so people searched for other way,” Sheikh Sekery, head of one of the groups, said.

Many of them go to Mecca through Turkey and Iran, although the cost of traveling per person through those countries is equal to the cost for four people traveling from Iraq.

Sekery thanked Iran for accepting a large number of Kurds who can not perform hajj through Iraq, and for providing them with hajj facilities.

Performing hajj for Kurds has became difficult after the 1991 Gulf War because of the conditions in Kurdistan, which is the reason many of Kurds had to search for other ways to visit Mecca.

Iran established a special road for Kurds to travel to Saudi Arabia through Tehran, with every pilgrim paying U.S.$1500.

More Expected

At least 600,000 more pilgrims are expected to arrive from all over the world before the arrival cutoff date of February 5, six days ahead of the hajj climax, which is expected to fall this year on February 10.

These will be joined by at least half a million pilgrims from across Saudi Arabia and another 200,000 to 300,000 faithful from Mecca itself.

In the shadow of a possible U.S.-led war on neighboring Iraq, the Saudi cabinet on Monday, January 27, called for a peaceful hajj, advising hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to stay ‘away from trouble’.

Last year, Saudi authorities deployed tens of thousands of police, soldiers, national guards and special forces for an incident-free pilgrimage attended by some 2.5 million people.

Gatherings, slogans and movements which are not part of the traditional rites of the pilgrimage are totally banned.

In July 1987, Saudi security forces clashed with Iranian pilgrims holding a protest against Israel and the United States. Official Saudi figures put the death toll at 402, including 275 Iranians.

All Muslims are required to make the pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in their lifetime, provided they have the means to do so.

Saudi authorities have stepped up preparations for the pilgrimage.

The health ministry has prepared some 21 hospitals and 300 medical centers, with a capacity of 7,000 beds, in Mecca, the surrounding sites and the city of Medina, some 450 km (275 miles) to the north.

An extra 9,500 medical staff including 115 specialists from the United States, Britain and Malaysia have been brought in, AFP said.

The Saudi Red Crescent Society set up 115 centers with 314 ambulances.