Saudi Arabia has called off a camel beauty contest scheduled for later this month in the face of the mystery deaths of thousands of the animals that are a national icon in the desert kingdom. The provincial governor for the Muslim holy city of Mecca, Khaled al-Faisal bin Abdel Aziz, took the decision in the face of the mounting death toll in a national herd estimated at 862,000 animals in 2005, the Al-Watan daily reported on Monday. In Saudi Arabia, camels are often referred to by the Arabic word mazaen (beauties) and can fetch more than one million riyals (200,000 euros) a head. The paper said that Agriculture Minister Fahd bin Abdul Rahman Balghnaim was not ruling out a “criminal dimension” to the deaths, which the Saudi media have described as a “national tragedy”.