[ARABNEWS] Four Yemeni pilgrims sustained minor injuries as a result of a fire that broke out in their room at 11th floor of a 15-floor hotel in Makkah.Col. Abdullah Al-Orabi Al-Harathi, director of media and front man of Civil Defense, said the incident occurred at 2:45 a.m. Monday.
Al-Harathi said some 1,500 pilgrims are the hotel were evacuated as a precautionary measure, but were later allowed to return after Civil Defense teams put out the fire.
Initial inspections showed that the fire was caused by a short-circuit in one of electrical connections of a room.
| Not a cooking fire in the middle of the floor that escaped to freedom? How unusual. |
The Haj has been almost incident-free for the past decade but 108 people, including foreign pilgrims, died earlier this month when a construction crane fell on the circumambulation area of the Grand Mosque.