A Bradford couple who fled a fire which killed hundreds in the 1997 hajj have survived the tragedy of this year's pilgrimage.

Mahmood-al-Hassan and his wife Tazeem Akhtar had travelled from their Thornbury Avenue home to Saudi Arabia for the annual pilgrimage.

But their children feared the worst when they heard of the stampede at the Jamarat Bridge which killed more than 300 Muslim pilgrims.

The couple's 21-year-old son Shahid Hassan said: "The last time my mum went they were in the camp where the fire started. They were in tent 17 and the fire started in tent 21. They survived because they ran to the closest mountain."

Shahid, who has an 18-year-old sister and two brothers aged ten and seven, spent two hours frantically calling his parents on Thursday after hearing what had happened.

"In 1997 there were not so many mobile phones and my dad managed to get in touch two or three days after the fire.

"I was worried sick. So this time I gave him and my uncle mobile phones. I was calling for two hours and as soon as I put the phone down my dad called to say he was OK."

The Bradford couple were making the pilgrimage with Shahid's uncle, Maulana Abdul Rehman, who is a former Imam at the Madni Jamia Mosque in Thornbury Road.

Up to 1,500 pilgrims from the district made their way to Saudi Arabia for the annual pilgrimage, according to Bradford Council for Mosques spokesman Ishiaq Ahmed.

He said: "People are very confused and angry because this is not the first time this has happened. There was a major incident in 1990 and there have been other incidents since."

And a Bradford police chief who witnessed first-hand the planning that went into this year's hajj said he felt the authorities did everything they possibly could.

West Yorkshire Police Assistant Chief Constable Jawaid Akhtar, who is the

former divisional commander for Bradford South Police, was invited to attend the annual pilgrimage to Mecca by the Saudi Interior Ministry to see how the Saudi authorities policed this year's hajj.

Speaking after arriving home in West Yorkshire, he said: "People have to have in their mind the scale of what the authorities are dealing with. The official figure is two and a half million people and the Saudi authorities know there are many more people who are not part of the official figure. Two and a half million is more than the population of West Yorkshire.

"When I first heard what happened I felt absolute sadness. From what I saw and from the people I spoke to, before this happened, there was a feeling that things had gone well this year."

He added: "I was looking at the command and control and planning process and clearly there is a huge amount of planning that goes into this."

Mr Akhtar said the Saudi authorities had responded to tragedies of previous years and plans were already in place before Thursday's tragedy to reconstruct part of the bridge of Jamarat.