“Everything went very well,” Mecca governor Prince Khaled al-Faisal told reporters on Sunday, adding that this year’s pilgrimage was “the most successful hajj season ever.”

Muslim pilgrims,who officially number 3.1 million, completed their final hajj rituals in the Saudi city of Mecca on Monday, as the annual pilgrimage ended without any major incidents.

In a press conference held in Mecca, the prince congratulated the pilgrims whose number ranged this year between 3.16 to 3.65 millions, blaming the inaccuracy on the enormous number of unregistered pilgrims, according to Saudi Gazette.

There were between 1,300,000-1,400,000 pilgrims with no Hajj permits this year and they used services they were not entitled to, the Emir said, adding that this huge number of unregistered pilgrims has caused many problems for the hajj organizing committee.

Each able-bodied Muslim is required to make the hajj once in a lifetime, as it is one of Islam’s five pillars.

AFP citing officials said about 120,000 police were deployed throughout the five-day pilgrimage, along with an equal number of health and sanitation employees.

Though marred in the past by deadly incidents including floods, stampedes and fires, the hajj has become nearly incident-free in recent years because of multi-billion dollar projects.

The Emir ended his speech saying that the real message the Kingdom wants to present through Hajj is the fact that Islam is the religion of peace, love, and coexistence blaming  

 international media for not focusing on the great message of Hajj.

In the video released on Sunday, fighters of the al-Baraa Brigade of the Free Syrian Army said that they had “captured 48 of the shabiha [militiamen] of Iran who were on a reconnaissance mission in Damascus”.

“During the investigation, we found that some of them were officers in the Revolutionary Guards,” said a man dressed in an FSA officer’s uniform, showing documents taken from one of the men, who appeared in the background, according to Al Arabiya.

Meanwhile, Iran’s state-run TV channel IRNA said the pilgrims were seized by “armed groups” on the Damascus airport road as they returned from a religious shrine, quoting an unnamed official in Iran’s embassy in Damascus as saying.

Tehran has repeatedly denied it has sent any military units to Syria. On Sunday, Iran asked Turkey and Qatar to help secure the hostages’ release, Iranian media reported.

Hundreds of thousands of Iranians travel each year to Syria to visit a Shia pilgrimage site, the shrine of Sayeda Zainab, in Damascus.

Syria’s unrest has escalated in the last weeks, with fighting engulfing Damascus and Aleppo for the first time in the 17-month uprising against Assad family rule.

The rebel army had claimed to have under  its control most of east Aleppo, while also maintaining a grip on central neighbourhoods, including Salaheddin and Bab al-Hadid, according to Al Jazeera. 

Meanwhile, Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, said “acts of brutality” reported in Aleppo could be crimes against humanity.