JAKARTA/KUALA LUMPUR, March 18 (Reuters) – Thousands of Muslim pilgrims from across Asia gathered in Indonesia on Wednesday, despite fears that their meeting could fuel the spread of a coronavirus, just two weeks after a similar event in Malaysia caused more than 500 infections. Organisers and regional officials said the event in the world’s fourth most populous nation had begun, although the regional police chief said he was making a last ditch-effort to persuade organisers to call it off. “We are more afraid of God,” one of the organisers, Mustari Bahranuddin, told Reuters, when asked about the risk of participants spreading the virus at the event in Gowa in Indonesia’s province of South Sulawesi.
