MAKKAH, January 18 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – More than two million pilgrims started Tuesday, January 18, flocking into Mina, an arid valley near the holy city of Makkah, in the first day of the hajj rituals.

Chanting “labbaik Allahumma Labbaik” (Here I am Allah, answering your call) in the early morning hours, Muslim pilgrims moved easily on foot or by buses from Makkah to Mina, the Saudi news agency reported.

The journey proceeded with calm and without major incident amid pleasant weather conditions.

The pilgrims will continue to stream through a mountain to Mina, some two miles outside Makkah, throughout the day to spend their day and night hours before moving early Wednesday to Mount Arafat.

Over 14,200 buses were mobilized to transport the pilgrims into the area.

While performing hajj, men are clad in a two-piece seamless white cloth which mark a state of purity that erases all differences of race, class or culture, while women are fully covered except for the hands and face.

Camping out at a vast tented village, the faithful will spend the day in prayer and meditation.

Before dawn Wednesday, January 20, the pilgrims will move towards Mount Arafat, a revered place in Islam where Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) delivered his last sermon 14 centuries ago, for the culmination of hajj.

Standing on Mount Arafat before sunset is the high point of hajj rituals, and pilgrims who fail to make it here on time must repeat their pilgrimage in future.

On Thursday, pilgrims will throw stones at three pillars on the spot where the Devil appeared to Prophet Abraham.

Able-bodied Muslims perform hajj at least once in their lifetime if they have the financial means.

It consists of several ceremonies, meant to symbolize the essential concepts of the Islamic faith, and to commemorate the trials of Prophet Abraham and his family.

The Muslim pilgrims moved to Mina amid tightened security measures in the kingdom to ensure safety and security for the nearly two million masses.

More than 50,000 Saudi security men were deployed in Makkah to ensure that violence does not mar the sanctity of the life-defining hajj, Agence France Presse (AFP) said Monday.

Security forces will have to work round-the-clock to ensure the masses pass smoothly through the rites to avoid a repetition of tragedies in recent years in which hundreds have been crushed to death in stampedes or fires.

Performing the fifth pillar of Islam, the Muslim pilgrims did not forget the dilemma of the Asian people, praying for victims of the Asian tsunami, Reuters reported.

“It was very bad, very bad and we are all thinking about it and praying for those who died and their families," Saeed Abderrahman, an Indonesian from Kalimantan, said outside the Grand Mosque in Makkah, full to capacity with pilgrims.

Zein Al-Arifin, a 43-year-old from Indonesia, also expressed similar feelings.

“I'm going to pray for the victims and all Indonesian pilgrims will do the same as me,” he said. “The tsunamis were unleashed by God to test our faith and we must be patient in the face of these trials.”

More than 162,000 people were killed and 600,000 others rendered homeless in Asian countries by the monstrous tidal waves spawned by a killer 9.0 magnitude earthquake.