The disaster, which also left several hundred people injured, was the second deadly accident to hit worshippers this month, after a crane collapse in the holy city of Mecca killed more than 100.
At the scene, bodies lay in piles, surrounded by discarded personal belongings and flattened water bottles, while rescue workers laid corpses in long rows on stretchers, limbs protruding from beneath white sheets.
Dark-skinned and light-skinned, they died with arms draped around each other.
"There was no room to maneuver," said Aminu Abubakar, a Nigerian pilgrim who escaped the crush of bodies because he was at the head of the procession.
Fellow pilgrims told him of children dying despite parents' efforts to save them near the sprawling tent city where they stay.
"They threw them on rooftops, mostly tent-tops... Most of them couldn't make it."
The stampede broke out in Mina, about five kilometers (three miles) from Mecca, during the symbolic stoning of the devil ritual. The Saudi civil defense service said it was still counting the dead, who included pilgrims from different countries.
Iran said 131 of its nationals were among the victims, and accused regional rival Saudi Arabia of safety errors.
Islamabad said seven Pakistanis were killed.
Pilgrims at the scene blamed the Saudi authorities and said they were afraid to continue the hajj rituals.
But Abubakar, an AFP reporter based in Kano, Nigeria, said that on Friday morning crowd control had improved and the number of pilgrims was much less.
"Now it's more organized... There's more control from the entry points. We don't expect a repeat of what happened," he said while moving back to the stoning site on the second of three stoning days.
King Salman ordered "a revision" of hajj organization, the official Saudi Press Agency said, while Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayyef, who chairs the kingdom's hajj committee, started an inquiry.
Saudi Health Minister Khaled al-Falih blamed worshippers for the tragedy.
He told El-Ekhbariya television that if "the pilgrims had followed instructions, this type of accident could have been avoided".
The stampede began at around 9:00 am (0600 GMT) Thursday, shortly after the civil defense said on Twitter it was dealing with a "crowding" incident in Mina.
Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims had converged on Mina to throw pebbles at one of three walls representing Satan, for the last major ritual of the hajj, which officially ends on Saturday.
Thursday's tragedy occurred outside the five-storey Jamarat Bridge, which was erected in the last decade at a cost of more than $1 billion (893 million euros) and intended to improve safety.
Interior ministry spokesman General Mansur al-Turki said the stampede was caused when "a large number of pilgrims were in motion at the same time" at an intersection of two streets in Mina.
"The great heat and fatigue of the pilgrims contributed to the large number of victims," he said. Temperatures in Mina had reached 46 degrees Celsius (115 degrees Fahrenheit) on Thursday.
Witnesses, however, blamed the authorities. One outspoken critic of redevelopment at the holy sites said police were not properly trained and lacked the language skills for communicating with foreign pilgrims, who make up the majority of those on the hajj.
"They don't have a clue how to engage with these people," said Irfan al-Alawi, co-founder of the Mecca-based Islamic Heritage Research Foundation.
"There's no crowd control."
The disaster came as the world's 1.5 billion Muslims marked Eid al-Adha, the Feast of Sacrifice, the most important holiday on the Islamic calendar.
It was the second major accident this year for pilgrims, after a construction crane collapsed on September 11 at Mecca's Grand Mosque, Islam's holiest site, killing 109 people, including many foreigners.
source: interaksyon.com
