Heavy rains have left 48 people dead in a number of provinces in Saudi Arabia, the Al Riyadh paper said on Thursday.

Rains lashed Jeddah and the adjacent holy places of Mina, Muzdalifah and Arafath, where pilgrims spent their first day of Hajj on Wednesday.

Traffic in Jeddah, located 80 km (50 miles) west of Mecca, was logged, and the sewage system was severely affected.

Meanwhile, the number of foreign pilgrims gathering for today's Hajj in Mecca has exceeded 1.6 million, Prince Naif, Saudi Arabia's second deputy prime minister, said in a telegram to Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz on Thursday.

Referring to the telegram, Saudi news agency SPA said the number of foreign pilgrims representing 183 nationalities was 7% down against 2008 and that 55% of all pilgrims are men.

ABU-DHABI, November 26 (RIA Novosti)