Afghanistan News January 8, 2006

January 8, 2006

Taleban head offered olive branch
Sunday, 8 January 2006 BBC News
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said he would be happy for Taleban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar to contact him with a view to reconciliation.

However, President Karzai told the Associated Press he did not expect Mullah Omar to come out of hiding.

He also said the Taleban head would have to account for his actions.

Last May a Taleban spokesman said the mullah would reject any amnesty offer, which had been floated by the head of the nation's reconciliation body.

Mr Karzai said: "We would like all the Afghans, Taleban or non-Taleban, whoever they are, if they want to come back to their country, to participate in the life of this country. It's their home, they're welcome."

He said that would include Mullah Omar.

"We would see what he has to say, of course. But I don't think he will come. He has so much on his hands against Afghanistan. We don't even know as to where he is hiding," Mr Karzai said.

"He has to first give us an account as to what he's done."

There has been no sight of Mullah Omar since US forces ousted his regime in late 2001.

Last May, the head of Afghanistan's independent peace and reconciliation commission, Sibghatullah Mojaddedi, said Mullah Omar should be accepted back by the government if he renounced arms.

It was not known at the time if the president backed the call but the US made it clear Mullah Omar would have to answer for his actions.

Karzai says drugs threaten Afghanistan's existence as nation-state
via: Bergensavisen-Norway 1/8/06
Kabul (AP) _ President Hamid Karzai said Sunday that a booming trade in opium and heroin threatens Afghanistan's existence as a nation-state, and that foreign mafia gangs were working with terrorists to force farmers to grow poppies.

Afghanistan has to fight drugs, period, or we will not survive as a nation-state,» Karzai told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview at his palace in the capital, Kabul.

Afghanistan is the world's biggest producer of illegal narcotics, yielding enough opium to make about 450 tons of heroin _ sparking warnings the country is fast becoming a «narco-state» four years after the U.S.-led invasion ousted the Taliban for harboring Osama bin Laden.

Karzai called drugs a «bigger threat than terrorism,» and said the problem has criminalized the economy, tainted the country's international image, hindered the development of strong government institutions and undermined young people's lives.

Tackling poverty, violence and drought are ways to fight the growing drug problem, Karzai said. But the scourge is made worse by international criminal gangs that intimidate people into growing poppies, often in collusion with Taliban forces or terrorists, the leader said.

«We have reports of the mafia, from rest of the world, coming and actively encouraging drugs in Afghanistan,» Karzai said. «They are not only from Russia, they are in Europe, they are in Afghanistan, they are in the neighbors of Afghanistan, they are everywhere.»

Gangs threaten to kill farmers if they don't turn to cultivating poppies, he said.

School set on fire in south Afghanistan
KABUL, Jan. 8 (Xinhuanet) -- Unknown armed men set on fire a primary school in Taliban's former stronghold Kandahar on Saturday night, the director of the education department in the province said Sunday.

"The enemies of peace torched the primary school of Qabail in the 9th precinct of Kandahar city last night and fled away," Hayatullah Rafiqi told Xinhua.

"The culprits also tied the hands of the two guards of the school and abandoned them on the ground," the official added.

The school admits both girls and boys. The regime of Taliban during its six-year reign banned girls' schools and confined women to their houses. Rafiqi said that Taliban militias through distributing pamphlets and night letters had asked girls not to go to school.

It is the fourth school that has been burned down over the past two months in the militancy-plagued southern regions.

Rafiqi said, "Remnants of Taliban regime committed the crime." Enditem

Suspected Taleban destroy Afghan coed school in latest attack on education
(AP) via Khaleej Times 8 January 2006
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Suspected Taleban gunmen destroyed a coed primary school in the main southern Afghan city Sunday, first tying up two security guards before setting the buildings on fire, officials said.

The attack in Kandahar was the latest in a spate of assaults that have forced many schools to close. The insurgents claim that educating girls is against Islam and they even oppose government-funded schools for boys because they teach subjects besides religion.

Suspected Taleban insurgents last Tuesday beheaded the headmaster of another coed school in the region.

In Sunday’s attack, a group of men raided Qabail Primary School before dawn, briefly detaining its guards but not hurting them, said Hayabullah Rafiqi Othak, Kandahar province’s education director.

The assailants then went into each classroom, making bonfires of books and wooden desks that eventually razed the whole school, he said.

Some 700 girls and boys had studied at the school. Builders were to immediately start reconstructing it and Othak said some classes may be able to resume when the current two-month vacation ends in March.

The attack came just hours after gunmen had tried to set fire to another school in Kandahar, but its guards had scared away the arsonists, the education director said.

Deputy provincial police chief Abdul Hakim Hungar said five suspects have been arrested.

Dozens of schools have been attacked and burned since US-led forces ousted the Taleban in 2001 for sheltering terror leader Osama bin Laden. Most of the attacks have come at night and not caused fatalities.

Passerby killed, policeman injured by bomb in Afghanistan
Sat Jan 7, 4:23 AM ET
JALALABAD, Afghanistan (AFP) - A passerby was killed and a policeman injured by a roadside bomb in eastern Afghanistan, officials said, changing their earlier statement that it was a suicide attack.

The explosion caused by a remote control bomb targeted a police vehicle in the eastern city of Jalalabad, local police spokesman Ghafoor Khan said on Saturday. He had earlier said a suicide bomber blew himself up near a police van.

"The person whose body was torn into pieces appears to be a student," Khan said adding that police found books lying around the mutilated body.

The latest attack comes two days after a deadly suicide car bomb in southern Uruzgan which killed 10 people and wounded dozens.

A purported spokesman for ousted Taliban militia, Mohammad Anif, in a telephone call to AFP from an undisclosed location, claimed responsibility for the attack and said it was a remote control bomb.

Khan was unable to say who might have been behind the latest bombing, but similar attacks including Thursday's have been blamed on the remnants of the ousted Taliban.

Taliban supporters are thought to be copying the tactics of insurgents in Iraq.

Suspected Suicide Bombing In Afghanistan
Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty
January 7 2005 -- One man has been killed and at least one police officer injured in what's being investigated as a suicide bombing attack in Afghanistan's eastern city of Jalalabad.

Police said the man who died is suspected of having carried the bomb. It was not immediately clear who may have been responsible. Today's incident came two days after 10 people were killed in a suicide bombing by a suspected Taliban militant in the central Uruzgan province.

U. S. Forces Airdrop Cold Weather Supplies in Afghanistan
Pak Tribune-Pakistan Sunday January 08, 2006
BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan: U. S. forces dropped eight bundles of humanitarian assistance supplies near Bamyan in central Afghanistan to help hundreds of families there survive the harsh winter, military officials here reported.

The bundles consisted of winter clothing for men, women and children as well as beans and rice, cooking oil, tarps, health kits, took kits and blankets. Together the supplies weighed more than 14,000 pounds.

"As the cold winter months come to Afghanistan in force, we’ve found that we are in a unique position to help those who are suffering the most," said Air Force Lt. Col. Josh Jose, Combined Joint Task Force 76 deputy chief of operations. "The delivery of these items to Bamyan allows our forces in that area to ensure that numerous families would be safe from the elements as the winter months move on."

U.S. provisional reconstruction teams in the area are distributing the supplies with the help of local government leaders.

500 Guardsmen to be sent to Afghanistan
via The Record Journal-U.S. 1/8/06
NEW HAVEN (AP) — The largest deployment of Connecticut Guardsmen since the start of the war on terrorism will begin this weekend as 500 Connecticut National Guardsmen leave for training in North Carolina.

After training for three to five weeks at Fort Bragg, N.C., the Guardsmen will then deploy to Afghanistan to help in rebuilding efforts.

The soldiers and members of their families were given a send-off at the Lanman Center in Yale University’s Payne-Whitney Gymnasium Thursday night.

“I have a simple message. It’s this: Thank you,” Gov. M. Jodi Rell told the troops.

The guardsmen are from 135 of Connecticut’s 169 municipalities. No Connecticut National Guardsmen are currently in Afghanistan, but 46 serve in Iraq.

Among those leaving is Sgt. Carl Bourne III of New London, a 26-year-old former Marine who is headed for his first deployment. His father, also a Marine, served in Iraq in 2004 and his brother is now in basic training.

“There’s some anxiety, and sadness to leave my family, but I knew it was part of the package when I signed up,” Bourne said.

Since the beginning of the war, about 75 percent of Connecticut’s Guard troops, or about 3,700, have been involved and have a combat patch for wartime service, said Guard spokesman Lt. Col. John Whitford.

Maj. Gen. Thaddeus J. Martin, adjutant general and commander of the Connecticut National Guard, said an additional 220 soldiers have been put on alert or received mobilization orders.

About 5,000 National Guard troops serve in Connecticut.

Army drops Afghanistan abuse case: Officer faced charges in '02 beating deaths
Tim Golden, New York Times Sunday, January 8, 2006
The U.S. Army has dropped its case against the only officer to face criminal charges in connection with the beating deaths of two prisoners held by the United States in Afghanistan, a military spokesman said Saturday.

The officer, Capt. Christopher Beiring, had led a reservist military police company that was guarding the main U.S. detention center in Afghanistan when the two men were killed within days of each other in December 2002. The prisoners died after guards kneed them repeatedly in the legs while each was shackled to the ceiling of his cell.

Beiring, 39, had been charged with lying to investigators and being derelict in his duties, in part by failing, after the first death, to order his soldiers to stop chaining up prisoners by the arms at the behest of military interrogators who wanted to deprive them of sleep before questioning.

"They certainly had a case to investigate -- two guys died," Beiring said Saturday in a telephone interview. "And obviously, some soldiers did some stuff wrong and needed to be punished. But I think it got blown out of proportion. At some point, they were just playing politics."

The collapse of the case is the most embarrassing of several setbacks for a team of Army prosecutors who have been working for more than a year on the deaths, which occurred at the military detention center in Bagram, 40 miles north of Kabul.

Beiring is the third member of the 377th Military Police Company, based in Cincinnati and Bloomington, Ind., to have had charges against him dismissed before trial. Four enlisted soldiers in the unit have been acquitted, two others pleaded guilty to assault, and one was convicted at trial of assault, maiming and other charges.

Four former interrogators from the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, based at Fort Bragg, N.C., have pleaded guilty to charges including assault, maltreatment and dereliction of duty.

In Beiring's case, the decision by the commander of the Army's Air Defense Artillery Center at Fort Bliss, Texas, where the Bagram cases are being tried, followed the recommendation of an investigating judge that the case not proceed to a court-martial.

Fort Bliss spokesman Luke Elliott said Beiring was issued a letter of reprimand for dereliction of duty. Beiring said he will formally rebut the accusations in the letter, calling them "a bunch of stuff that has already been proven to some degree to be untrue."

15-Year-Old Combatant in Afghanistan to Face Guantanamo Trial Three Years Later
Haider Rizvi, Source: OneWorld US Sat Jan 7, 11:26 PM ET
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 7 (OneWorld) - When the terror suspects held at Guantanamo Bay prison are brought before United States military judges next week, among them will be a minor captured as an "enemy combatant" by the U.S. army in Afghanistan some three years ago.

Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen, faces imminent trial by military commission at Guantanamo Bay for war crimes he had allegedly committed at the age of 15, his lawyers say.

"This would be the first such trial of an individual under the age of 18 at the time of alleged offense in modern history," says American University law professor Richard Wilson who, along with Munir Ahmed, also a law professor, represents Khadr.

Khadr was born in Canada in September 1986 and is therefore a citizen of that country. He and his family left Kabul, Afghanistan in October 2001, shortly after his 15th birthday, as U.S. forces started military action in that country, according to the two lawyers.

Khadr was later captured by U.S. armed forces during a July 2002 skirmish near the town of Khost in which he allegedly lobbed a hand grenade that killed a U.S. soldier. He was then transferred to the U.S. air base at Bagram where his lawyers say interrogation, torture, and other severe mistreatment began immediately, although he was hospitalized and recovering from wounds.

Khadr was transferred to Guantanamo Bay in October 2002, and since then he has been held there in solitary confinement. In the face of intense criticism from human rights groups, the U.S. Defense Department released many children in January 2004, but Khadr was not one of them.

By then the military, according to Wilson, had decided that any child over the age of 16 at the time of his arrival at Guantanamo Bay would be treated as an adult for all purposes.

"Had Khadr not been held for more than two months in Bagram, when he was 15, before being transferred to Guantanamo, presumably he would have been treated as a child too and sent home," says Wilson, who claims that Khadr has been severely mistreated and continuously interrogated, without charges.

Khadr did not have access to counsel until July 2004 when Wilson and Ahmed entered into representation of him on pro bono basis, Wilson says, adding, "our appearance was limited at that time to representation in habeas corpus proceedings arising from the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Rasul vs. Bush in 2004, which held that Guantanamo detainees had a right to access to the courts."

Now more than a year after that decision, the government continues to argue that the U.S. courts have no jurisdiction over the detainees, and refuses to provide even the most basic information about names and countries of origin for a majority of the detainees.

Wilson and Ahmed say they have visited Khadr only five times over the past 18 months because access is "extremely limited" due to court orders and other restrictions imposed by the military.

Two months ago, Khadr was finally charged with four alleged "war crimes," which also include "murder by an unprivileged combatant."

Khadr's lawyers say they have reviewed the records of trials held by international tribunals, beginning with Nuremberg after World War II, and have found no record of trial of a juvenile under the age of 18 for war crimes in any tribunal, including those for the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, or East Timor.

Last week, Wilson and Ahmed sent a letter to Kofi Annan, the U.N. Secretary General, and Karin Sham Poo, Annan's special representative for Children and Armed Conflict, asking for U.N. intervention into Khadr's case.

"This unprecedented action cries out for your intervention," they wrote. "We request that your office fully investigate, document, and denounce this development."

They also urged Annan to send a representative to Guantanamo to attend the military hearings as an observer for "the protection of this child victim of armed conflict."

In October, U.N. Commission on Human Rights special rapporteur Leandro Despouy presented a report to the General Assembly in which he took the U.S. government to task for its policy on Guantanamo prisoners.

In his report, which focused on the independence of judges and lawyers, Despouy described the continued detention and trial of suspects at Guantanamo by the U.N. military commission as a "disturbing development."

"They do not allow appeals to be brought before a civil judge, and discriminate between national and foreign national among other things," he said.

Last year, the U.S. government continued to insist that the "circumstances were not favorable" to honor U.N. requests by several human rights experts to visit Guantanamo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other detention centers.

In response the U.N. experts said they had decided to conduct an investigation regardless of whether or not they are allowed to visit the U.S.-run prisons.

In their appeal to Annan, Wilson and Ahmed drew Annan's attention to Khadr's case by citing the Optional Protocol to the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which declines jurisdiction over any one under the age of 18 at the time of their alleged offenses.

But the U.S. has no obligation to abide by these treaties because it has not ratified any of them.

The military trial at Guntanamo Bay prison is scheduled to start Wednesday.

Iraq replaces Afghanistan as centre of global terrorism: analyst
Sun Jan 8, 12:48 AM ET
SINGAPORE (AFP) - Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the nerve centre of global terrorism by militant groups whose ability to regenerate, despite setbacks, means that suicide bombings and other mass-casualty attacks remain a serious danger in 2006, analysts say.

Three major developments are likely to define the security landscape this year, Singapore-based terrorism analyst Rohan Gunaratna told a forum organised by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) last week.

"The first is that Al-Qaeda has morphed or transformed from a small group into a terrorist movement," he told diplomats, academics, officials and business executives.

"So today the threat is not so much from one single organisation called Al-Qaeda but from the global jihad movement."

Gunaratna, head of terrorism research at the Singapore-based Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, said governments must "prepare for a challenge posed by a number of disparate groups" waging campaigns on the global, regional and local levels.

"The second most significant development we have seen is that the centre of gravity of international terrorism has shifted from Afghanistan to Iraq," he said. "Iraq is the new land of jihad.

"Like we saw the last generation of jihadists coming from Afghanistan, we will see the next generation of jihadists will come from Iraq."

The US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 that ousted the fundamentalist Taliban regime resulted in the dismantling of Al-Qaeda training bases there.

Al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was moving to establish a global terrorist network from Iraq similar to the way Osama bin Laden had done from Afghanistan, Gunaratna said.

The third significant development was the deepening cooperation among various militant groups worldwide, Gunaratna said.

In Southeast Asia, Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) remained a long-term threat, said Jakarta-based terrorism analyst Sidney Jones, Southeast Asia project director of the think-tank the International Crisis Group.

JI had split into two -- the mainstream JI with an estimated membership of about 1,000, and a radical faction called the JI Thoifah Muqotilah with 30 to 50 members bent on carrying out suicide attacks -- Jones told the ISEAS forum.

Mainstream JI leaders were opposed to indiscriminate bombing and their main goal was the establishment of an Islamic state in the region, Jones said.

The JI suicide brigade seemed to operate independently from the mainstream, and its main aim was to attack US and allied targets, Indonesian non-Muslims and Indonesians associated with the West, Jones told the ISEAS forum.

Among the radical faction's members were Noordin Mohamed Top, Dulmatin and Umar Patek -- all linked to deadly bomb attacks, including blasts which killed more than 200 people on the Indonesian island of Bali in 2002 and 2005.

While bombing remained its weapon of choice, the radical JI faction had also contemplated kidnappings, both to raise funds and instill terror, Jones said.

Among the planned targets were Americans working at an electrical plant near Banyuwangi in Indonesia and an Australian hotel manager in Surabaya. None of the planned kidnappings were carried out.

Zachary Abuza, a terrorism expert at Simmons College in Boston, told the same forum that clandestine JI training bases in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao continued to churn out militants.

"Mindanao in many ways remains the soft underbelly in terms of security in Southeast Asia," Abuza said.

A conflict between the Philippine government and the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) had left "vast swathes of ungoverned territory" in Mindanao, which groups like JI had moved into, he said.

The JI had established training camps in Mindanao in the mid-1990s and "training continues there to this day, although on a much, much smaller scale," Abuza said.

According to Jones, two of the JI radical faction's senior operatives, Dulmatin and Umar Patek, are in Mindanao.

Abuza noted that the MILF had publicly denied ties with the JI, but that signal intercepts by the Philippine military and statements from arrested JI members showed otherwise.

While the JI suicide squad packed lethality, it was the JI mainstream which posed the longer-term security threat, Jones said.

A mainstream JI leader, Abu Rusdan, was likely to rebuild the organisation following his recent release from prison, but Jones expected him to focus on religious outreach programmes, not violence, to revive the group.

"The problem in the long term for Indonesia is that as JI revives and reconstructs and rebuilds its mass base, what then is it going to do with that mass base?" Jones said.

"It is still continuing to give its members military training and once you do that, there's always a question of how that military training will be used."

Soldier killed in Afghanistan was a father for just four weeks
By BEN DOBBIN Associated Press Writer January 7, 2006, 3:32 PM EST
HILTON, N.Y. -- He was the eldest of four sons, a fresh-faced Army recruit, a father for just four weeks.

Pfc. Jason Hasenauer, 21, a former firefighter, was killed in Afghanistan on Dec. 27 when a roadside bomb toppled a Humvee he was riding in. He was laid to rest Saturday in a rural cemetery in western New York.

"Your tour of duty is ended, not only on this earth, not only in the military, not only in the fire department, but in life," the Rev. William Spilly said in a eulogy before hundreds of mourners.

"We wish you had been here longer but we thank God for the time God gave you to us. We will not forget you because we loved you."

Hasenauer was sitting in a machine-gun turret when the bomb explosion overturned his Humvee in Kandahar. He died of head injuries. Four other men in the vehicle were injured.

Assigned to the 82nd Airborne in Fort Bragg, N.C., Hasenauer only learned in early December that his fiancee, Colette Kopp, had given birth to their first child, Kayla.

The last days of Hasenauer's life, Spilly said, were consumed with "his excitement over being in love, his excitement over being called Daddy."

Last year was the deadliest in Afghanistan since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban in 2001 for harboring Osama bin Laden. The fighting killed about 1,600 people, including 91 members of the U.S. military, as militants belonging to the Taliban, al-Qaida and other groups have stepped up attacks.

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld has ordered the number of troops in Afghanistan to be cut from 19,000 to about 16,500 by next spring.

Hasenauer graduated from high school in 2003 and joined the fire department in this village 25 miles northwest of Rochester. He gave up a job at a department store to join the Army because he had a strong sense of duty and "he wanted to do more," said his father, Dan.

Six military comrades carried his flag-draped coffin from the church his family attended in nearby Hamlin. His fellow firefighters lined the main street in Hilton as the funeral procession passed through, hoisting a giant U.S. flag atop two fire-engine stepladders. Passers-by stood by their cars with their hands placed over their hearts or in salute.

At the cemetery, while Hasenauer's infant daughter cried, an honor guard fired three volleys, a bugler played taps and the Stars and Stripes was ceremoniously folded and handed to his family.

Hajj Begins in Saudi Arabia
By VOA News 08 January 2006
More than two million Muslims have gathered in Saudi Arabia's Mina Valley on the outskirts of the holy city of Mecca for the annual pilgrimage, or hajj.

The white robed pilgrims, from around the world, head to Mount Arafat Monday for prayers.

On Tuesday, the pilgrims take part in the symbolic stoning of the devil, throwing pebbles at three pillars. The ritual has been marred by deadly stampedes in the past, including the deaths of more than 240 pilgrims two years ago.

Saudi officials reorganized access to the area this year in hope of avoiding another tragedy. On Thursday, a hostel for pilgrims in Mecca collapsed, killing 76 people.

The hajj is a requirement of all able-bodied Muslims at least once in a lifetime.

Saudi on alert as 2.5 million pilgrims start hajj
Sun Jan 8, 5:29 AM ET
JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia (AFP) - An estimated 2.5 million Muslims have begun their annual hajj or pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia with the authorities on high alert to prevent another tragedy after a deadly hotel collapse.

The pilgrims began the trek from the holy city of Mecca to the nearby valley of Mina after dawn prayers, tracing the journey made by Prophet Mohammed more than 1,400 years ago.

The rites, known as the hajj, started Sunday three days after a hostel in the heart of Mecca collapsed, killing 76 people, the latest deadly disaster to strike the pilgrimage.

Saudi authorities called off rescue operations Friday and the rubble of the Luluat al-Kheir (Pearl of Grace) hostel was removed to allow a sea of pilgrims to flow from Mecca to Mina, five kilometres (three miles) to the east.

The hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam and a once-in-a-lifetime obligation for all devout, able-bodied Muslims with the means to make the journey.

Men and women of all age, colour and nationality dressed in white robes and sandals started marching on foot or boarded buses to Mina after dawn prayers.

They will spend the day known as "Yawm at-Tarwiya" in prayers and meditation, sleeping at night in fire-proof tents before heading further south on Monday to Mount Arafat for the climax of the hajj.

Balloons and national flags fluttered above the white tents covering the arid valley to guide pilgrims.

Hundreds of security force members in military fatigues fanned out in the area while Asian labourers in orange jumpsuits swept the streets.

Even some of those wounded in Thursday's building collapse will leave their hospital beds and go to Mina in specially-equipped ambulances, a senior health official said.

"The custodian of the two holy shrines (Saudi's King Abdullah) ordered it," said Khaled al-Samiri. "God has ordained the kingdom to serve this sacred spot and the pilgrims."

Almost 60,000 security, health, emergency and other personnel are involved in organising the hajj this year, trying to make sure none of the deadly incidents that have marred it in recent years are repeated.

King Abdullah, members of the royal family and the religious establishment and several ministers have come to Mecca to be close to the progression of the hajj, which is a matter of national pride for the ultra-conservative kingdom that considers itself a beacon for the world's estimated 1.3 billion Muslims.

In addition to stampedes that killed 251 pilgrims in 2004 and 1,426 in 1990 and a camp fire in 1997 in which 343 perished, authorities have to tackle the threat of disease, rioting and terrorist attacks.

The health ministry said it was not worried about avian flu, which has killed three children in Turkey over the past week and nearly 40 people in Asia last year.

"All the pilgrims that already came in are disease free," said spokesman Khaled al-Mirghalani.

Pilgrims were required to show proof they were vaccinated for common contagious diseases before being allowed into the country.

Samiri said 9,600 doctors, medics and other staff were on standby at 14 hospitals, clinics and field facilities, while hundreds of ambulances and helicopters are on standby.

"I feel relaxed that we are ready, the rest is in God's hands," said Tariq al-Arnous, the head of emergency operations at the health ministry.

A similar attitude was echoed by some of the pilgrims leaving for Mina.

"Whatever God ordained will happen," said Ahmed Omar, 40, from Somalia, accompanied by his wife and his wheelchair-bound mother-in-law.

Another pilgrim from Yemen said he was worried about potential accidents after the hotel collapse.

"But I must do this for God," said Qaed Mehdi, 50.

The most perilous rite of the pilgrimage will take place on Tuesday when pilgrims flock back to Mina from Arafat to stone three pillars symbolising the powers of the devil. The area is the scene of most of the deadly stampedes.