The number of Bangladeshi pilgrims who died in last month's stampede during Hajj has risen to 63.

The Hajj mission in Saudi Arabia confirmed the death toll, said Hajj Agencies Association of Bangladesh President Mohammad Ibrahim Bahar yesterday.

At least 131 other Bangladeshi hajis have been missing since the September 24 incident at Mina of Saudi Arabia, said officials of the Bangladesh consulate in Jeddah on Monday.

Among 1.6 lakh Bangladeshis who went to perform Hajj this year, 29,000 returned home till yesterday morning, Ibrahim said.

Saudi's official figures of 769 killed and 934 injured in the stampede remain accurate, said Saudi officials, though an investigation is on to find out the reasons behind the stampede.

Two weeks before the Mina incident, 107 people died as a construction crane collapsed into the Grand Mosque in Mekkah. 

Many countries that sent pilgrims to this year's Hajj estimated the number of deaths in stampede alone at more than 1,000.

News agency Associated Press yesterday claimed that both the tragedies during the annual hajj pilgrimage to the kingdom killed at least 1,264 people.

The number is based on the tolls offered by 17 countries through their officials or state media broadcasts. 

Health authorities in the kingdom had said civil defence officials would be offering any new casualty figure but no new toll has been released since September 26.

The disaster in Mina happened as two waves of pilgrims converged on a narrow road, causing hundreds of people to be suffocated or trampled to death, said the Saudi authorities. 

But Iran has blamed it on the kingdom's "mismanagement." It also accused Riyadh of a cover-up, saying the real death toll exceeds 4,700, without providing evidence to support its claim, according to an AP report.

Diplomats in Indonesia, Pakistan and India have said Saudi officials gave them some 1,100 photographs of dead victims of the Mina disaster. Saudi officials, however, say the photographs include pilgrims who died of natural causes during Hajj.