KARACHI: Issuance of e-visa to Umrah pilgrims has started on Wednesday from Karachi, ARY News reported.
An announcement in this regard has been made by the Saudi Arabian government.
The pilgrims will have to submit their passports with the travel agents under the agreement with Zaireen Saudi Umrah company.
The Saudi Arabian embassy has stopped the sticker system on passports for Umrah.
Biometric verification of Umrah pilgrims will also not be carried out from now onwards.
On March 3, Saudi Arabia had issued more than 4.33 million Umrah visas this year with the largest number of pilgrims visiting the kingdom from Pakistan.
The total figure for approved visas had stood at 4,338,959, out of which 3,892,554 pilgrims had arrived in the Kingdom, according to data provided by the Saudi Ministry of Hajj and Umrah.
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443,560 pilgrims were by then in the country with 304,897 of them in Makkah and 138,663 in Madinah.
Most pilgrims – 3,464,929 – had traveled to the Kingdom by air, while 392,632 had entered by land and 34,993 had arrived by sea.
The largest number of pilgrims were from Pakistan (949,895), followed by Indonesia (633,253), India (408,495), Yemen (206,980), Egypt (204327), Malaysia (200,873), Turkey (183,164), Algeria (138,092), and Bangladesh (99,629).
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