MANY East Lancashire people will have spent anxious moments in the past 24 hours worrying that friends or relatives might have been involved in the tragedy that killed 345 pilgrims in Mina, Saudi Arabia.

As Foreign Secretary and Blackburn MP Jack Straw said today, the final day of the hajj pilgrimage, which all able-bodied Muslims with the financial means are required by their faith to do are least once, should be a time for joy and celebration not the terrible sadness we have seen.

The enormous number of people converging on a small part of their country gives the Saudi authorities a difficult task in trying to ensure safety.

Al-Jamarat, the site of yesterday's stampede, has seen deaths in seven of the past 17 yearly pilgrimages including 244 fatalities last year and more than 1,400 people killed in 1980.

Lord Adam Patel blamed illegal pilgrims who were ignoring rules aimed at controlling crowd flow for the tragedy.

Many safety precautions have been made by the authorities although reports said police often appeared overwhelmed by the 2.5million pilgrims attending.

Let's hope further changes can be made to ensure all pilgrims can have happy memories of their hajj.