Over 2.2 Million Zamzam Water Bottles Will Be Distributed during Hajj

Muslims perform Friday prayers at the Grand Mosque in the holy city of Makkah. (SPA)
Muslims perform Friday prayers at the Grand Mosque in the holy city of Makkah. (SPA)
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Over 2.2 Million Zamzam Water Bottles Will Be Distributed during Hajj

Muslims perform Friday prayers at the Grand Mosque in the holy city of Makkah. (SPA)
Muslims perform Friday prayers at the Grand Mosque in the holy city of Makkah. (SPA)

The King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz’s Zamzam Project is ready to prepare more than 2.2 million Zamzam water bottles during this year's Hajj season to meet increasing demand.

General President of the Affairs of the Grand Mosque and Prophet's Mosque Sheikh Dr. Abdulrahman Al-Sudais called for doubling the maximum production capacity of bottled Zamzam water to reach 200,000 bottles per day, reported the Saudi Press Agency on Saturday.

He also urged the continued selling of Zamzam water bottles through accredited contractors.

The service aims to achieve the project's mission and is in line with the directives of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz to serve Islam and Muslims, stressed Dr. Al-Sudais.

The service seeks to provide Zamzam water to the pilgrims in an easy way. It uses the latest automatic mechanisms throughout the stages of water purification, from the moment it is extracted from the well and until it is bottled at the factory, Dr. Al-Sudais explained.

The water is automatically bottled in healthy and safe packages without any human intervention to preserve the quality and safety of the blessed water provided to the pilgrims.



China’s ‘Hawaii’ under Water as Tropical Storm Dumps Record Rainfall

People and vehicles move through a waterlogged road in Sanya, south China's Hainan Province, Oct. 28, 2024. (EPA/ Xinhua / Zhao Yingquan)
People and vehicles move through a waterlogged road in Sanya, south China's Hainan Province, Oct. 28, 2024. (EPA/ Xinhua / Zhao Yingquan)
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China’s ‘Hawaii’ under Water as Tropical Storm Dumps Record Rainfall

People and vehicles move through a waterlogged road in Sanya, south China's Hainan Province, Oct. 28, 2024. (EPA/ Xinhua / Zhao Yingquan)
People and vehicles move through a waterlogged road in Sanya, south China's Hainan Province, Oct. 28, 2024. (EPA/ Xinhua / Zhao Yingquan)

For a third day, extreme rainfall pounded the southern Chinese province of Hainan, known as China's "Hawaii", amid the transit of yet another tropical cyclone, leaving the island half-submerged in a year of record-breaking wet weather.

Cities in Hainan including Sanya, famed for its palm trees, seafront hotels and sandy beaches, remained waterlogged on Tuesday due to Tropical Storm Trami to the south. On Monday, Sanya logged 294.9mm (11.6 inches) of rainfall over a 24-hour window, the most for any day in October since 2000.

Trami made landfall in central Vietnam on Sunday after a slow trek across the South China Sea from the Philippines, where it left at least 125 people dead and 28 missing. While Hainan did not take a direct hit from Trami, Chinese authorities took no chances, recalling all fishing vessels and evacuating over 50,000 people.

China's entire eastern coastline has been tested by extreme weather events this year - from the violent passage of Super Typhoon Yagi across Hainan in September to the strongest tropical cyclone to strike Shanghai since 1949. Scientists warn more intense weather is in the offing, spurred by climate change.

"In October, the national average precipitation was 6.3% higher than the same period in previous years," Jia Xiaolong, a senior official at the National Climate Centre, said at a news conference on Tuesday.

Last week, the water along China's Bohai Sea inexplicably rose up to 160 cm (5.2 feet) in a matter of hours despite the absence of any wind, leading to a tidal surge that flooded the streets of Tianjin and many cities in the northern provinces of Hebei and Liaoning.

"It's hard to imagine how much power was needed to push such a large area of sea water to one place," Fu Cifu, an official at the National Marine Environmental Forecasting Centre, told state-run Xinhua news agency at the time.

China is historically no stranger to floods, but its prevention infrastructure and emergency response planning are coming under increasing pressure as record rains flood populous cities, ravage crops and disrupt local economies.

Amid disaster recovery efforts this summer, authorities had to provide billions of dollars in additional funding to support reconstruction in multiple regions from the south to the northeast of China.

In July, the country suffered 76.9 billion yuan ($10.8 billion) in economic losses from natural disasters, with 88% of those losses caused by heavy rains and floods from Typhoon Gaemi, the most for the month of July since 2021.