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Sheikh Taqi al-Mawla, head of the umrah and hajj commission in Iraq, said on Wednesday that Iraq’s hajj quota will increase by 2,200 pilgrims next year.

“We [worked] to figure out the realistic number of Iraq’s population...and Iraq has thus been granted [the approval] of adding 2,200 pilgrims to next year’s hajj,” Mawla said.

He added that there are agreements with Saudi Arabia to increase Iraq’s hajj quota to 34,000 pilgrims each year.

The umrah and hajj commission had previously announced that Saudi Arabia has specified Iraq’s quota at 32,500 pilgrims for this year.

Najem al-Saadi, general director of the public relations and media department at the commission, said in a press conference that the kingdom specified the number of pilgrims from Iraq according to the latter’s population and according to what the Islamic conference had previously agreed on.

“The share of each one million people is 1,000 pilgrims. This applies to all Islamic countries. Each country’s quota depends on the number of its officially [registered] population,” Saadi added.