Saudi Arabia's healthy ministry has confirmed that no COVID-19 cases were recorded among the Haj pilgrims.
That's according to the Saudi Press Agency (SPA), which quoted Dr. Muhammad Al-Abdali, Assistant Minister of Health and official spokesman of the Saudi Ministry of Health, as also confirming that "no diseases were affecting public health".
It comes as the World Health Organisation (WHO) praised the country for putting into place strict safety precautions to prevent a coronavirus outbreak during the five-day pilgrimage.
"I’d like to congratulate the kingdom of Saudi Arabia for the steps it has put in place to make the Hajj as safe as possible this year," Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO's director general, said in Geneva.
"This is a powerful demonstration of the kinds of measures that countries can and must take to adapt to the new normal."
The scaled-down pilgrimage begun on Wednesday, with about 10,000 pilgrims in the Kingdom attending, compared to the usual 2 million.
US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday the US was making progress in its efforts to negotiate an end to war with Iran, including winning an important concession from Tehran, while media outlets reported Washington had sent a 15-point settlement proposal.
The Pentagon is expected to send thousands of soldiers from the army's elite 82nd Airborne Division to the Middle East, according to reports on Tuesday, adding to the massive military buildup even as the Trump administration seeks talks with Iran.
The National Transportation Safety Board said on Tuesday that a system which would have allowed a New York airport controller to track movement of aircraft and vehicles did not alert during a Sunday night fatal collision between an Air Canada commercial jet and a truck that killed two pilots.
A rare Russian daytime drone attack on Ukraine killed three people, wounded several dozen and set a building in the historic centre of the western city of Lviv aflame on Tuesday, officials said, following an overnight bombardment that killed five.
A total of 69 people died when a Colombian military plane crashed soon after takeoff earlier this week, the country's armed forces said in a statement on Tuesday, in an incident that injured 57 others.
The Ministry of Defense (MoD) have offered their condolences to the family of a Moroccan civilian contractor in the UAE Armed Forces who was killed during a routine mission in Bahrain following an Iranian missile attack.
There is no direct Qatari mediation between the United States and Iran, but Doha supports all formal and informal diplomatic channels to end the war, Qatar's foreign ministry spokesperson said on Tuesday.
Germany and France have both spoken out against United States President Donald Trump's actions over the conflict in Iran in a rare rebuke of a major ally.
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