At least 15 people have been killed in the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia after a four-storey building housing Muslim pilgrims collapsed.
A fire had broken out in the building a short while earlier.
At least 39 people were injured in the incident as huge crowds gathered for the annual Haj, a five-day-long Islamic ritual attracting pilgrims from around the world.
More than 2.5m pilgrims are expected to converge on Mecca
for the haj, which begins formally on Sunday.
The Saudi authorities had set a deadline at midnight last night for the last pilgrims to arrive in the kingdom.
They had also deployed some 60,000 security personnel to try to prevent any repetitions of the deadly stampedes and structural failures that have marred previous pilgrimages.
