Three days after the tragic stampede in Mina during this year’s Haj, the whereabouts of dozens of pilgrims, both from the Kingdom and from abroad, remains unknown.

From all over the Kingdom, hundreds of relatives and friends of pilgrims have converged on Makkah in search of their friends and loved ones. Diplomats from many countries continue to make constant trips to the mortuary in Mina seeking information about the dead.

“We have made several rounds of the mortuary in Muaisam in Mina which is where we have been told all the bodies are being kept,” said close relatives of Khaleeq Khan and his wife Bilquis Jahan Ara.

“The authorities have displayed photographs of the faces of those who died. Our relatives are not among them and that is a relief.”

Khan and Jahan Ara are from Hyderabad, India, but they were living in Riyadh and had come for Haj through a local operator. They left their children, an 18-year-old daughter and a six-year-old son, at home in Riyadh before leaving on the pilgrimage.

Their relatives have checked most of the hospitals to see if Khan and his wife are among the injured. “No, they aren’t among the injured either,” the relatives told Arab News on Sunday.

There are similar situations with Shakeel Khan from Bulandshahr in Uttar Pradesh, India, and a well-known Indian Islamic scholar from Meerut, Mufti Mohammed Farooq.

Shakeel Khan’s brother, Raees Khan, was injured in the stampede and is being treated at a hospital. He does not know where his brother is or even if he is alive or dead.

The next big question facing these people is: Where should they search next? Nobody, neither the authorities nor the diplomats, has a clear answer. “At the moment everyone is groping in the dark,” said the relatives of Khaleeq Khan and Jahan Ara. “Their children are totally distraught.”Representatives of the Pakistani Haj mission have taken photos of the faces of the dead and have uploaded them in their Makkah office.

“Anybody whose relative is missing is free to search for their relatives in those photos,” said a Pakistani official. The Pakistani Haj mission in Makkah is located on Abdullah bin Dahesh Street.

The official said though the photos are only available on the mission’s computers in Makkah, they may eventually make all the photos available in Jeddah and in Pakistan.

Pakistani Consul General Aftab Khokher reiterated that a missing pilgrim does not necessarily mean a dead pilgrim. “The phenomena of missing pilgrims is a natural occurrence at Haj because of the mass movement of pilgrims from Makkah to Mina to Arafat and back,” he said. “Things will get clear in the next 24 hours.”

Khokher said 1,100 photos of the dead are displayed at the Muaisam mortuary. “The photos were taken from two angles — frontal face and sideways. The majority of the photos are of African pilgrims. We have separated those photos from our database to help Pakistanis locate their missing family members and friends.” He said so far 36 Pakistanis had been identified as among the dead. An additional 23 are being treated at different hospitals. He said some bodies were also being kept at Al-Noor Hospital in Makkah.

Besides displaying the photos of the 1,100 dead at the mortuary, the Saudi authorities have taken fingerprints of the dead and are matching them with the database that they collected from pilgrims upon their arrival. Those details have not been released as yet.

A top Saudi official clarified on Sunday that not all 1,100 photos displayed at the Muaisam mortuary are of victims of the Mina stampede. “Many of them have died of heatstroke and other natural causes during the pilgrimage,” he said. The official death toll of stampede in Mina was put at 769.

Meanwhile, identifying domestic pilgrims is the biggest problem. “Since they came from within the Kingdom, we have no database for them,” an Indian official explained to Arab News. “On the other hand, we have photos and all details readily available for those who came from India through the Haj Committee or with a private tour operator. Also, most of them were wearing metallic wristbands on which identification details were engraved. We are trying to match the photos of missing persons that we have with the photos in the mortuary.”

This is not, however, the case with domestic pilgrims. They came through local Haj operators and only had their permits and their iqamas. They were not wearing any metallic wristbands. Identifying them is thus especially difficult.

Indian Consul General B.S. Mubarak said he had a list of 44 Indians who are being treated in different hospitals. “We are in the process of uploading the photos and details of those 44 injured,” he said. If the missing pilgrims are not among the injured, the prognosis can be dire.

Jaweiriya from Myanmar, Burma, sent a WhatsApp message to Arab News on Sunday seeking news about his brother who has gone missing in Mina since Thursday. “Here is the passport copy (No. MA984901) of my brother, Faisal Myo Thu San Lwin,” she wrote in her message. “Kindly help us in locating him.”

According to informed sources, more photos of the victims are to be displayed at the Muaisam mortuary. Some of the critically injured pilgrims were also taken to hospitals in Jeddah and Taif. With no identification on them, the medical and nursing staff at those hospitals are not sure of their names or nationalities.