About 34 Nigerian pilgrims, including Vice President Namadi Sambo’s advance Hajj team, narrowly escaped death on Tuesday morning during a fire outbreak in their hotel in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
More than 60 other lodgers, among them women and children, also escaped unhurt.
The pilgrims are performing the lesser Hajj, for which Sambo was expected to arrive Medina on Tuesday evening.
The hotel, a seven-storey building, is a few metres away from the Nigerian consulate.
Fire engulfed the fourth floor and it took the fire fighters over two hours to put it out.
A man, believed to be a staff of the hotel but who refused to disclose his identity, attributed it to electrical fault from the misuse of an electric cooker by a guest. www.naijapaymentsonline.com
Some Nigerian lodgers saluted the prompt response of the Saudi Fire Service.
One said: “My greatest surprise during the fire outbreak was that neither the hotel management nor the fire fighters cut out the electricity supply even though the fire was caused by an electrical problem.
“You can see that we are still enjoying the supply of electricity on all the floors in spite of the fire incident except the affected fourth floor.”
It also emerged on Tuesday that Saudi Arabia has begun the biggest expansion yet of Islam’s holiest site, the Grand Mosque in Mecca, to raise its capacity to two million pilgrims, the state news agency SPA said.
“King Abdullah inaugurated in Mecca (on August 19, 2011) the start of the expansion which is the largest of all previous expansions combined,” SPA noted.
It did not say how much it will cost to add 400,000 square metres to the mosque’s area or how long the project will take.
The Grand Mosque is the main attraction for over six million pilgrims who enter Mecca each year, and is the focal point for a transformation aimed at modernising one of the oldest cities in the region with high-rise skyscrapers and residential blocks.
The mosque is built around the Kaaba shrine, which existed centuries before Islam emerged over 1,400 years ago.
Muslims around the world turn toward it for daily prayers.
The expansion project will include pedestrian bridges as well as more shaded space to protect worshippers from the sun.
Saudi Arabia has invested billions of Dollars in recent years in safety and comfort for the millions of pilgrims who flock to Mecca to fulfil their religious duties of Hajj and Umra.
A new railway, costing $1.8 billion, was launched last year to link the holy sites around Mecca to ease pilgrim transport.
Another project, the high-speed Haramain Railway, will link the holy cities of Mecca and Medina to the Red Sea port of Jeddah, an entry point for millions of pilgrims, to relieve road congestion.
The Saudi Railway Organisation is studying bids for the second and final phase of the rail project, which includes the construction of tracks and installation of signal systems, as well as the procurement of rolling stock.
The announcement of the winning bidder is expected by October and negotiations are under way with a consortium that includes Spanish firms, pan-Arab Asharq al-Awsat newspaper reported on Saturday, quoting unnamed sources.
The paper also said one consortium, which it did not identify, had bid 46.8 billion riyals ($12.5 billion).
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