• Home
• /
• World

Frenchman jumps to death at Makkah's Grand Mosque

Makkah - A video of the incident has gone viral online.

A Frenchman has committed suicide by throwing himself off the roof of the Grand Mosque in Islam's holiest city of Makkah, Saudi and French officials said Saturday.
"A foreigner threw himself from the roof of the Grand Mosque in Makkah" to the courtyard below, "resulting in his instant death", Saudi police told the official SPA news agency.
A French foreign ministry official told AFP in Paris that the dead man was French but gave no further details.
The body was transported to hospital, with an investigation underway "to determine the victim's identity, what led to the act and how he was able to commit it despite the existence of a metal fence", SPA said.
A video of the incident has gone viral online.
In the video, taken from the opposite end of the mosque, the man can be seen throwing himself from the roof of the Grand Mosque to the ground floor of the circumambulation nave, resulting in his immediate death, SPA added.
Last year, a Saudi man tried to set himself on fire in front of the Kaaba - the square stone building in the centre of the mosque compound - but was stopped by security forces.
Every year, millions of Muslim pilgrims from across the world travel to Makkah and Madinah, Islam's second holiest site, also in western Saudi Arabia.