text: 1987 demonstrations On Friday 31 July 1987, the demonstration started amid heightened security after Friday's midday prayers, while Iranian pilgrims chanted "Death to America! Death to the Soviet Union! Death to Israel!". The march was uneventful until the end of the planned route when the demonstrators found their way blocked by Saudi riot police and National Guardsmen. At this point, some of the Iranians began to call for the demonstrators to press ahead and continue to the Great Mosque, at the same time "unidentified persons in an adjacent parking garage" began to throw "bricks, pieces of concrete, and iron bars" at the Iranians. These events angered the Iranians, escalating the situation  into a violent clash between the Iranian pilgrims and the Saudi security forces.
  Force used
  The Saudis reportedly used truncheons and electric prods and the Iranians reportedly used knives and clubs.
  Saudi security personnel deny firing at the demonstrators, Saudi officials insist that no shots were fired, and that all deaths were caused by the melee and stampede. In a Washington news conference, the Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan claimed that "not one bullet was fired", blaming the violence on the Iranian pilgrims who he accused of "brandishing knives, clubs and broken glass drawn from beneath their cloaks".
  Iranian officials maintain that the Saudis had fired on the protesters without provocation and that the demonstrations had been peaceful.   Robin Wright also reports that "many of the Iranian bodies, shown to American and European reporters immediately upon their return to Tehran, had bullet punctures." Ami Ayalon, an Israeli politician, wrote that "most of the Iranian pilgrims apparently shot by Saudi security authorities during the demonstration". Martin Kramer also writes that "according to American intelligence sources, the tide was finally turned by reinforcements from the National Guard, who fired tear gas shells into the crowd and then opened fire with pistols and automatic weapons".