The Taliban-led Ministry of Hajj and Religious Affairs has announced that the first group of Afghan pilgrims, after performing 40 prayers at the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, has been transferred to the city of Mecca.<\/p>\n
According to the ministry’s newsletter, over the past week, more than 9,600 pilgrims from Afghanistan have been sent to Saudi Arabia via 31 flights.<\/p>\n
Officials state that this year, a total of 30,000 Afghans are expected to undertake the Hajj pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia. However, due to the number of applicants exceeding the allocated quota, the selection process for pilgrims is conducted through a lottery system\u2014a method that annually brings anticipation and concern among residents.<\/p>\n
Hajj is one of the most important Islamic rituals, during which Muslims from around the world travel to the cities of Mecca and Medina. In recent years, Saudi Arabia has invested in expanding infrastructure and providing conveniences for pilgrims in these two cities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The first group of Afghan pilgrims has arrived in Mecca after prayers in Medina, with 30,000 expected to perform Hajj this year via a lottery system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11545,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-religion-thought"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11546\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}