Some of the 1.2 million foreign pilgrims and hundreds of thousands from Saudi Arabia expected to perform the annual Haj pilgrimage have started converging on the Muslim holy city of Makkah. More than 1.07 million pilgrims have already arrived in Saudi Arabia, 972,000 of them by air for the Haj, which officially starts on January 19, Okaz newspaper reported Wednesday.
Another 17,000 arrived by sea, with more than 6,500 Sudanese and 1,000 Egyptian pilgrims crossing the Red Sea to the port of Jeddah, it said.
The desert kingdom, home to two of Islam's holiest sites of Makkah and Madina, last year received 1.4 million foreign pilgrims, in addition to some 473,000 from within the country.
Haj is also a lucrative season for the western region of oil-rich Saudi Arabia, which reportedly earned about 5.2 billion riyals (1.38 billion dollars) from foreigners during last year's pilgrimage.
The 1.4 million foreign pilgrims who flocked to Makkah spent 1.4 billion riyals (373.3 million dollars) on accommodation, a survey showed. They also spent two billion (533.3 million dollars) on air transport, of which 20 percent went to state carrier Saudi Airlines, and the remainder on other services and gifts.
Figures on pilgrims are expected to keep rising, forcing the kingdom to increase its capacity to accommodate the largest annual Muslim gathering world-wide and where deadly stampedes do happen.
Estimates expect Haj figures to grow to three million in five years and to between 3.5 and 3.7 million in 10 years.
This would be in addition to more than 10 million performing the umrah every year by 2014.
The foreign ministry announced last week that it had issued more than 2.6 million visas for the umrah during the current Islamic calendar year 1425, up 16 percent on the previous year.