A private airliner, flight PA 741, carrying more than 201 pilgrims was scheduled to arrive at Lahore’s Allama Iqbal International Airport early on Friday morning, marking the official start of the post-Hajj flying operation.
Umer Butt, a spokesperson for Pakistan’s ministry of religious affairs and interfaith harmony, informed the Associated Press of Pakistan, “Similarly, the second aircraft PA 871 carrying around 200 Hajj pilgrims will arrive in Multan on July 13 at 10:50pm.”
Butt stated that the flights will begin from Madina on July 18 and that they would run nonstop until August 13 to transport back about 82,000 Pakistani pilgrims from Saudi Arabia after the Hajj.
The Civil Aviation Authority and the airlines involved would provide a warm welcome to the returning pilgrims, as would the authorities in charge of religious affairs and interfaith harmony. All arriving pilgrims would get five liters of each Aab-e-Zam Zam.
Extreme heat, with temperatures reaching 42 degrees Celsius, did not deter believers from making the pilgrimage to Mecca for Hajj this year.
It was reported on June 28 by sources in the Pakistan Hajj Mission that at least five Pakistani pilgrims have died while doing the Hajj in Saudi Arabia. The deaths of three pilgrims occurred in Makkah while the deaths of the other two occurred in Madinah.
The Sharia cemetery in Makkah was where the bodies of Fazal Ali from Swat, Hafiz Mohammad Siddique from Lahore, and Syed Khair Mohammad from Pishin were laid to rest. Aladdin, a pilgrim from South Waziristan, and Najam Al-Nisa, a resident of Karachi, were buried at Madinah’s Jabal Uhud Cemetery, according to Aaj News.
