Over 1.5M foreign Muslims in Mecca for Hajj

MECCA, Saudi Arabia — Muslim pilgrims have been streaming into Saudi Arabia's holy city of Mecca ahead of the start of the Hajj later this week, as the annual pilgrimage returns to its monumental scale.

Saudi officials say more than 1.5 million foreign pilgrims have arrived in the country by Tuesday — the vast majority, by air — from across the world. More are expected, and hundreds of thousands of Saudis and others living in the Middle Eastern kingdom will also join them when the Hajj officially begins on Friday.