Saudi King Abdullah has launched the largest expansion of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Islam's holiest city in the history, at a cost of 80 billion riyals (10.6 billion U.S. dollars), daily Arab News reported on Saturday.
The extension project, which was launched on Friday, will increase the capacity of the mosque to more than 2.5 million worshippers at time, Xinhua reported.
The project envisages two more minarets to bring the mosque's total number of minarets to 11.
It will cover an area of 456,000 square meters and will accommodate 1.2 million worshipers. The total existing area of the mosque is 356,000 square meters, accommodating 770,000 worshipers.
Every year, more than 2 million Muslims flock to Mecca to perform Hajj (the annual pilgrimage).
...