MAKKAH, Jan 6: Survivors of the collapse of a hostel in Makkah recounted on Friday their horror. “I heard one big noise,” said Algerian pilgrim Tayeb Mizasha, 70, as he lay in bed in King Faisal hospital with broken ribs and a bruised face. “At first I thought it was an earthquake.”

He said he was staying at the Luluat al Kheir hostel with 16 other Algerians who had come from the suburbs of the French city of Lyon to perform Haj.

“I do not know where my wife is,” said Mizasha.

In another ward a Yemeni who worked in a clothing store on the ground floor of the building said four of his Yemeni co-workers died in the accident.

“I just found myself across the street from the building and I looked up and it was a pile of rubble,” said Ali Qasim al Rimi, 35.

“I do not know if I fled or someone pulled me out.”

Saudi authorities have so far refused to provide the nationalities of the victims. But survivors said some of the pilgrims staying in the hostel came from Pakistan, India, Libya or the United Arab Emirates.

A Bengali porter working at an adjacent hotel said he lost six of his compatriots.

The English-language Arab News said Saudi authorities confirmed that three of the dead were Emiratis.

A group of pilgrims from Egypt said they were caught in a stampede on the crowded street in the Ghazzah neighbourhood, where the accident happened some 200 metres north of the Grand Mosque.

“We were walking back from noon prayers and suddenly debris started falling down on us,” said Rajab al Sayed, 46.

“We ran for our lives and two of my friends were taken down by the crowd,” added Sayed

Mohammed Ali, 68, who suffered some concussions said he managed to get up but Mohammed Suleiman, 70, was not so lucky.

“I was trampled on by the crowd,” said a distraught Sulieman as he lay in bed with a broken shoulder surrounded by his weeping wife and friends.

Emergency teams armed with sound-detecting gear have been working frantically since Thursday to try to locate survivors amid the rubble of the building which an official charged was overcrowded.—AFP