Iraq Announces Plans for $17 Billion Transportation Project Linking Asia to Europe

A handout picture released by Iraq's Prime Minister's Media Office shows Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani attending a meeting with transport ministry representatives in Baghdad on May 27, 2023. (Iraqi Prime Minister’s Press Office/AFP)
A handout picture released by Iraq's Prime Minister's Media Office shows Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani attending a meeting with transport ministry representatives in Baghdad on May 27, 2023. (Iraqi Prime Minister’s Press Office/AFP)
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Iraq Announces Plans for $17 Billion Transportation Project Linking Asia to Europe

A handout picture released by Iraq's Prime Minister's Media Office shows Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani attending a meeting with transport ministry representatives in Baghdad on May 27, 2023. (Iraqi Prime Minister’s Press Office/AFP)
A handout picture released by Iraq's Prime Minister's Media Office shows Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani attending a meeting with transport ministry representatives in Baghdad on May 27, 2023. (Iraqi Prime Minister’s Press Office/AFP)

Iraq’s prime minister on Saturday announced plans for a $17 billion regional transportation project intended to facilitate the flow of goods from Asia to Europe.

The announcement was made at a one-day conference in Baghdad that convened transport ministers and representatives from Iraq, the Gulf countries, Türkiye, Iran, Syria, and Jordan.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said the planned Development Road project would facilitate the movement of goods from the Gulf to Europe by way of the Grand Faw Port in Basra, in southern Iraq, which would be connected to Türkiye, then to Europe, through a network of railways and highways.

A centerpiece of the project will be the development of the Grand Faw Port and a "smart industrial city" adjacent to it, Sudani said.

The planned project, which would involve the construction of about 1,200 km (about 745 miles) of railways and highways, will be "an economic lifeline and a promising opportunity for the convergence of interests, history, and cultures," said Sudani, adding it will "make our countries a source for modern industries and goods."

Iraq's government envisions high-speed trains moving goods and passengers at up to 300 kilometers (186.41 miles) per hour, links to local industry hubs and an energy component that could include oil and gas pipelines.

It would mark a significant departure from the country's existing aged transport network.

Iraq's train service currently operates a handful of lines, including slow oil freight and a single overnight passenger train that trundles from Baghdad to Basra, taking 10 to 12 hours to cover 500 kilometers.

"The Development Road is not just a road to move goods or passengers. This road opens the door to development of vast areas of Iraq," Farhan al-Fartousi, director general of the General Company for Ports of Iraq, told Reuters.

The Grand Faw Port, which was devised over a decade ago, is halfway to completion, he said.

Passenger transport between Iraq and Europe harkens back to grand plans at the turn of the 20th century to create a Baghdad to Berlin express.

"We will make this line active again and tie it to other countries," Fartousi added.

If work starts early next year, the project would be completed in 2029, Fartousi revealed.

"Even if Iraq was absent for a year or two or a decade or two, it must return one day or another. Hopefully these days are the beginning of the return of Iraq," he stressed.

The countries participating in Saturday's conference agreed to establish joint technical committees to move the project forward.



Amnesty Accuses Israel of 'Live-streamed Genocide' against Gaza Palestinians

TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
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Amnesty Accuses Israel of 'Live-streamed Genocide' against Gaza Palestinians

TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)

Amnesty International on Tuesday accused Israel of committing a "live-streamed genocide" against Palestinians in Gaza by forcibly displacing most of the population and deliberately creating a humanitarian catastrophe.

In its annual report, Amnesty charged that Israel had acted with "specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, thus committing genocide".

Israel has rejected accusations of "genocide" from Amnesty, other rights groups and some states in its war in Gaza.

The conflict erupted after the Palestinian group Hamas's deadly October 7, 2023 attacks inside Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Hamas also abducted 251 people, 58 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel in response launched a relentless bombardment of the Gaza Strip and a ground operation that according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory has left at least 52,243 dead.

"Since 7 October 2023, when Hamas perpetrated horrific crimes against Israeli citizens and others and captured more than 250 hostages, the world has been made audience to a live-streamed genocide," Amnesty's secretary general Agnes Callamard said in the introduction to the report.

"States watched on as if powerless, as Israel killed thousands upon thousands of Palestinians, wiping out entire multigenerational families, destroying homes, livelihoods, hospitals and schools," she added.

'Extreme levels of suffering'

Gaza's civil defense agency said early Tuesday that four people were killed and others injured in an Israeli air strike on displaced persons' tents near the Al-Iqleem area in Southern Gaza.

The agency earlier warned fuel shortages meant it had been forced to suspend eight out of 12 emergency vehicles in Southern Gaza, including ambulances.

The lack of fuel "threatens the lives of hundreds of thousands of citizens and displaced persons in shelter centers," it said in a statement.

Amnesty's report said the Israeli campaign had left most of the Palestinians of Gaza "displaced, homeless, hungry, at risk of life-threatening diseases and unable to access medical care, power or clean water".

Amnesty said that throughout 2024 it had "documented multiple war crimes by Israel, including direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects, and indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks".

It said Israel's actions forcibly displaced 1.9 million Palestinians, around 90 percent of Gaza's population, and "deliberately engineered an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe".

Even as protesters hit the streets in Western capitals, "the world's governments individually and multilaterally failed repeatedly to take meaningful action to end the atrocities and were slow even in calling for a ceasefire".

Meanwhile, Amnesty also sounded alarm over Israeli actions in the occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank, and repeated an accusation that Israel was employing a system of "apartheid".

"Israel's system of apartheid became increasingly violent in the occupied West Bank, marked by a sharp increase in unlawful killings and state-backed attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian civilians," it said.

Heba Morayef, Amnesty director for the Middle East and North Africa region, denounced "the extreme levels of suffering that Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to endure on a daily basis over the past year" as well as "the world's complete inability or lack of political will to put a stop to it".