MECCA: The world’s largest annual religious pilgrimage began today overshadowed by the swine flu pandemic as 2.5 million Muslims amassed at the holy city of Mecca for the Hajj. A rare rainstorm and possible banned protests by Iranian pilgrims also threatened to mar the four-day Hajj, but Saudi officials said they were prepared for all eventualities. A sea of pilgrims from all over the world, dressed in flowing white robes, surrounded the Kaaba shrine inside Mecca’s Grand Mosque for dawn prayers today. Four pilgrims, all of them already suffering from other health problems, had died from swine flu ahead of the official start of the rites. But proven and suspected infections from the A(H1N1) flu amid hajj participants only number 67, Saudi health ministry spokesman Dr Khaled Marghlani told AFP. “Everything is going smoothly, thanks to God,” he said. The flu has killed some 6,750 people around the world this year, the WHO said last Friday, and Saudi authorities have deployed as many as 20,000 health workers. Relatively few pilgrims could be seen wearing surgical masks widely distributed by the Saudi health ministry, despite the first report of H1N1 deaths on Saturday. The infections detected so far were scattered among pilgrims from different countries and no concentration in any one source, Marghlani said. Likewise, the four dead had arrived from four different countries, three from Asia and one from Africa.