- Saudi Arabia has deployed an astonishing 100,000 security personnel to guard against threats from Islamic State
- The team consists of members of an elite counterterrorism unit, traffic police and civil defense personnel
- It will use 5,000 CCTV cameras to monitor those attending, as well as deploying thousands more to walk the beat
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Saudi Arabia has deployed 100,000 security personnel to oversee the annual Islamic Hajj pilgrimage – underscoring the multitude of threats one of the largest pilgrimages in the world faces.
Roughly 3million people from around the world are expected to converge on Tuesday at the Kaaba, in Mina and other nearby areas for the Hajj, which lasts about five days.
It is series of rituals meant to cleanse the soul of sins and instill a sense of equality and brotherhood . All able-bodied Muslims are required to perform the hajj once in their lives.
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Four members of the government’s 100,000-strong security force keep an eye on just a handful of the 5,000 CCTV cameras operating
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Members of an elite counter terrorism unit, traffic police and emergency civil defense personnel are among those deployed
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The huge size of the pilgrimage, which faces threats from ISIS, means it requires an proportionately large security force
But such a huge undertaking requires a massive security presence, given the threats facing those carrying out the pilgrimage.
Major General Mansour al-Turki said: ‘We always concentrate on Hajj considering that a threat might exist.
‘We’ve been targeted by terrorism for years now and we know that we are a target for terrorist groups.’
Speaking from the Interior Ministry’s security headquarters for the Hajj, which is located in the sprawling tent city of Mina just a few miles outside the Grand Mosque in Mecca.
Members of an elite counterterrorism unit, traffic police and emergency civil defense personnel are among those deployed to help with crowd control and safety.
They are supported by additional troops from the army and national guard, al-Turki said.
Inside the Interior Ministry’s nerve center, police monitor dozens of screens with feeds from about 5,000 CCTV cameras installed throughout Mecca and Medina, the two cities frequented by pilgrims.
‘We’re active, we’re awake,’ al-Turki said, referring to the security forces’ readiness to deal with any eventuality.
Civil defense emergency personnel were among the first responders when a crane collapsed at the Grand Mosque on September 11, killing 111 people and injuring nearly 400 others who had come for the Hajj.
Authorities blamed the collapse on high winds and the contractor was faulted for not following operating procedures.
On Thursday, the kingdom’s military and police put on a parade in Mecca, with security forces jumping through burning hoops and thwarting a mock terrorist attack.
The show was aimed at deterring any would-be troublemakers, and was attended by Crown Prince and Interior Minister Mohammed bin Nayef, who himself was the target of a terrorist attack in 2009.
Saudi Arabia’s custodianship of holy sites in Mecca and Medina has long made the kingdom a target of terrorist groups who want to wrestle control of them from the kingdom’s Western-allied monarchy.
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A Saudi security officer chats to a colleague on the phone while watching CCTV monitors inside the Mecca’s security base
The pilgrimage this year comes as Saudi Arabia faces an expansion of Islamic State group attacks.
Two Saudi suicide bombers targeted Shiite pilgrims in eastern Saudi Arabia in May, and a Saudi suicide bomber carried out a third attack in June in neighboring Kuwait.
The attacks, which killed 53 people, were claimed by an ISIS affiliate calling itself ‘Najd Province,’ the traditional name for the central heartland of the peninsula.
An ISIS-claimed suicide bombing last month in Abha, 350 miles south of Mecca, killed 15 people inside a mosque in a police compound . It was the deadliest attack on the kingdom’s security forces in years .
Eleven of the dead belonged to a counterterrorism unit whose tasks include protecting the Hajj.
That attack was claimed by a second alleged ISIS affiliate in Saudi Arabia calling itself ‘Hijaz Province’ of the Islamic State group, in reference to the traditional name of the western stretch of the Arabian Peninsula.
Al-Turki acknowledged that this year the kingdom saw the most terrorist acts since 2003, when al-Qaida unleashed a wave of bombings that lasted for three years until its militants were driven out to Yemen where they remain active.
Little is publicly known about the structure of the Islamic State group in Saudi Arabia, such as whether militants in the kingdom have direct operational ties with the group’s leadership based in its self-declared ‘caliphate’ in Iraq and Syria – or if they simply operate independently in the group’s name.
Al-Turki said ISIS supporters in Saudi Arabia are little more than small ‘cluster cells’ or even individuals inspired by the ISIS group who find one another by communicating online .
He said their claims of having a province or state in Saudi Arabia is nothing more than online propaganda.
‘In reality, they cannot control a centimeter anywhere in Saudi Arabia,’ he said.
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Thousands of tents are prepared to host millions of Muslim pilgrims during the annual Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia
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