in a stampede. On January 12, 2006, a stampede killed at least 346 pilgrims and injured at least 289 more. On September 24, 2015, the 2015 Mina disaster in the tent city near the bridge killed between 1,100 and 2,431 people and injured 934. Following the 2004 crush, Saudi authorities embarked on major construction work in and around the Jamaraat Bridge area. Additional access ways, footbridges, and emergency exits were built, and the three cylindrical pillars were replaced with longer and taller oblong walls of concrete to enable more pilgrims simultaneous access. The next year they announced plans for a new, four-storey bridge. Keith Still, professor of crowd science at Manchester Metropolitan University was consulted in 2004 by the Saudi authorities on designs for the new Jamarat bridge, to ease the bottleneck in front of the pillars. He pointed out that this may not solve the overall problem. The efficiency of the bridge would be improved, becoming able to handle 500,000 to 600,000 people an hour instead of the previous 200,000, but putting pressure on other parts of the complex system, enabling greater numbers of people to arrive at potential bottlenecks further along the route. The layout of the Mina valley encampment, where the 2015 Mina disaster happened, had not changed. Keith Still considers that redesign of the whole complex could make the Hajj safe, but others consider that an event with the crowd density of the hajj is inherently dangerous, with challenges at the pinch points. Edwin Galea of the Fire Safety Engineering Group at the University of Greenwich pointed out that the 500,000 people per hour that the Jamaraat Bridge could deliver was equivalent to the largest ever football crowd every 24 minutes, or the population of Germany in a week; he suggested that spreading the Hajj over a longer period was a possible solution. The need to stone the devil at all was questioned by Egyptian physician and feminist writer Nawal El Saadawi, who said that the crush happened because people were fighting to do this, and was dubious of talk about changing the way the Hajj is administered and making people travel in smaller groups. See also Incidents during the Hajj Notes Deadly Mecca-crush Blamed on Bridge-Bottleneck Sydney Morning Herald, 13 January 2006. Minshawi.com Hajj ritual sees new safety moves BBC News Tuesday, 10 January 2006, 19:17 GMT. Hajj crush police 'not to blame' BBC News