TONGI, Dec 13: Tens of thousands of Muslims, from Bangladesh and 71 other countries, gathered on Friday at the start of an annual Islamic congregation, considered the second-largest after the Haj.

The three-day Biswa Ijtema — or World Muslim Congregation — began with Fajr prayers, attended by around 100,000 people, on a sprawling tract of vacant land in this central Bangladeshi town.

Pilgrims have been arriving for days on buses, trucks, ferries and special trains. Officials said they expected the crowd to double during the day.

The state-run transport corporation alone added more than 100 special buses and the authorities have been running special shuttle trains from Dhaka and other centres since Wednesday to deal with the rush.

Security was tight around the town, on the banks of the Turag river, 20 kilometres from Dhaka.

Organizers say the event could bring together some two million devotees for the climax on Sunday when the traditional concluding prayers, or “Akheri Munajat”, will be held seeking divine blessing.

The ceremony is to be conducted by a leader of the worldwide Muslim group, Tablighi Jamaat, who normally travels to Bangladesh from India.

Religious figures on Thursday started delivering sermons on Islam between prayers and recitations from the Holy Quran.

There was no immediate estimate of this year’s foreign participants, but last year more than 5,000 joined, mainly from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Libya, Kuwait, United States and Britain.—AFP