“I am responsible, but responsibility does not mean blame,” he said.
“The disaster that happened this year could have happened any other year,” Ohana said, noting that in fact the number of revelers at the holy site was far lower this year than in previous years. He said the scope of the tragedy went “far beyond the police.”
Ohana also gave full backing to the police, saying that “the whole chain of command did its job” ahead of and during the incident, including the police chief and district commander.
The minister added that he had visited the wounded over the weekend and spoken to relatives of victims, and described the pain of hearing their stories.