Iraq | All flights suspended at Erbil airport due to heavy dust storm

Arab Weather - Erbil International Airport (EIA) suspended all flights on Thursday (April 7th) due to the dense sandstorm that hit the Kurdistan Region.

Ahmed Hoshyar, Director of the Environmental Information Department, said that all flights were suspended due to poor visibility due to the sandstorm that began to hit the Kurdistan Region at dawn on Thursday. Hoshyar added that flights will resume as soon as weather conditions allow.

Sulaymaniyah International Airport in the Kurdistan Region also suspended all flights on Thursday due to reduced visibility due to the severe sandstorm that hit the autonomous region and northern Iraq.

Officials in Mosul announced a holiday on Thursday throughout the Iraqi province, due to the heavy dust.

Read also: 3 deaths in Iraq and dozens of cases of suffocation after a dust storm swept many areas

Dust storms in Iraq and climate change

In early March, one person died as a result of a dust storm in Iraq, and another 1,000 people were hospitalized.

The increasing desertification in Iraq in recent years has contributed to the intensification of such storms, and Iraqi officials expect further increases in dust storms in the coming years.

Issa Rahim Dakhil Al-Fayyad, Director General of the Iraqi Ministry of Health and Environment, warned Tuesday that Iraq will witness a significant increase in the number of dust storms in the country during the next twenty years.

Iraq has been classified by the United Nations as the fifth country exposed to the adverse effects of climate change, and some of those effects are already starting to appear in Iraq, including reduced rainfall, drought, reduced wheat production, and water scarcity.