The first two cases of the new coronavirus in the Gaza Strip — a war-shattered Palestinian territory with a fragile health system — were confirmed in men who attended a mass religious gathering 10 days ago in Pakistan, United States’ (US) National Public Radio (NPR) has quoted an Islamabad-based Palestinian diplomat as saying.

The diplomat said the men were part of a two-day gathering that ended March 12. The gathering of the Tablighi Jamaata global Muslim missionary group, brought together tens of thousands of preachers from some 80 countries and raised concerns about the virus’ spread in Pakistan and beyond.

The Pakistani authorities had urged for the cancellation of the five-day Tablighi Ijtema congregation hosted annually near Lahore but organisers from the movement had ignored government advice to postpone, The News reported.

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A longtime Pakistani Tablighi Jamaat member, Arif Rana, said the gathering was canceled on March 12 because of rain — attendees sleep in the open. But Azhar Mashwani, focal person to the Punjab chief minister (CM) on digital media, said that it ended because of coronavirus fears.

Most attendees were Pakistani, but at least a few thousand came from other countries, Rana told NPR.

Omar al-Tabatibi said his 79-year-old grandfather, Mohammed, and friend Amer Doghmosh had attended the Lahore event.

Previous statements from health officials had misidentified the men as being between 30 and 40. “My grandfather learnt about the conference by chance from a friend while he was in Pakistan so he wanted to attend,” Tabatibi said.

After returning from Pakistan, his grandfather stayed several days in Egypt before taking the long journey overland to Gaza, Tabatibi said. “Maybe, my grandfather caught corona in Egypt and not Pakistan, no one knows,” he added.

Five preachers from Kyrgyzstan stayed in a mosque in Islamabad after attending the Tablighi Jamaat gathering and have also tested positive, said a senior health official who did not want to be named because he was not authorised to speak to the press.

On Twitter, Muhammad Hamza Shafqaat, the deputy commissioner of Islamabad, accused the Kyrgyz group of “criminal carelessness” because “they knew that one of them had symptoms and they kept on roaming around”.

Concerns have also been raised in Southeast Asia about infection after a Tablighi Jamaat gathering outside Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in late February and early March. Malaysian media reported that more than half of the country’s known coronavirus cases were traced to the gathering. Preachers who attended also spread the virus to Brunei and Thailand, The New York Times reported, saying the gathering created “the largest known viral vector in Southeast Asia”.