Baghdad Airport Resumes Flights After Suspension Due to Bad Weather

A man rides a bicycle along the Sinek bridge spanning the Tigris river in Iraq's capital Baghdad during a severe dust storm on April 20, 2022 AHMAD AL-RUBAYE AFP
A man rides a bicycle along the Sinek bridge spanning the Tigris river in Iraq's capital Baghdad during a severe dust storm on April 20, 2022 AHMAD AL-RUBAYE AFP
TT

Baghdad Airport Resumes Flights After Suspension Due to Bad Weather

A man rides a bicycle along the Sinek bridge spanning the Tigris river in Iraq's capital Baghdad during a severe dust storm on April 20, 2022 AHMAD AL-RUBAYE AFP
A man rides a bicycle along the Sinek bridge spanning the Tigris river in Iraq's capital Baghdad during a severe dust storm on April 20, 2022 AHMAD AL-RUBAYE AFP

Baghdad international airport resumed flights on Wednesday after suspending operations earlier in the day due to bad weather, the state news agency INA cited Iraq's Civil Aviation authority as saying.

Iraq was hit by the third heavy dust storm in two weeks, temporarily grounding flights as the weather phenomenon grows increasingly frequent.

The air in Baghdad was thick with a heavy sheet of grey and orange dust.

The airport serving the city of Najaf to the south also released a statement announcing flights were grounded on Wednesday.

Two dust storms struck the country earlier in April, leaving dozens hospitalized with respiratory problems and temporarily grounding flights at a number of airports.

"The dust is affecting the whole country but particularly central and southern regions," Amer al-Jabri, an official at Iraq's meteorological office, told AFP.

"Iraq is facing climatic upheaval and is suffering from a lack of rain, desertification and the absence of green belts" around cities, he said.

Iraq is particularly vulnerable to climate change, having already witnessed record low rainfall and high temperatures in recent years.

Experts have said these factors threaten social and economic disaster in the war-scarred country.

In November, the World Bank warned that Iraq could suffer a 20-percent drop in water resources by 2050 due to climate change.

In early April, environment ministry official Issa al-Fayad had warned that Iraq could face "272 days of dust" a year in coming decades, according to the state news agency INA.

The ministry said the weather phenomenon could be confronted by "increasing vegetation cover and creating forests that act as windbreaks".



US Troops Need to Stay in Syria to Counter ISIS, Austin Says

FILE - US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin makes a speech at Diplomatic Academy of Ukraine in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)
FILE - US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin makes a speech at Diplomatic Academy of Ukraine in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)
TT

US Troops Need to Stay in Syria to Counter ISIS, Austin Says

FILE - US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin makes a speech at Diplomatic Academy of Ukraine in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)
FILE - US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin makes a speech at Diplomatic Academy of Ukraine in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)

The US needs to keep troops deployed in Syria to prevent the ISIS group from reconstituting as a major threat following the ouster of Bashar Assad's government, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told The Associated Press.
American forces are still needed there, particularly to ensure the security of detention camps holding tens of thousands of former ISIS fighters and family members, Austin said Wednesday in one of his final interviews before he leaves office.
According to estimates, there are as many as 8,000-10,000 ISIS fighters in the camps, and at least 2,000 of them are considered to be very dangerous.
If Syria is left unprotected, “I think ISIS fighters would enter back into the mainstream,” Austin said at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where he traveled to discuss military aid for Ukraine with about 50 partner nations.
“I think that we still have some work to do in terms of keeping a foot on the throat of ISIS," he said.
President-elect Donald Trump tried to withdraw all forces from Syria in 2018 during his first term, which prompted the resignation of former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. As the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, or HTS, advanced against Assad last month, Trump posted on social media that the US military needed to stay out of the conflict.
The US has about 2,000 troops in Syria to counter ISIS, up significantly from the 900 forces that officials said for years was the total number there. They were sent in 2015 after the militant group had conquered a large swath of Syria.
The continued presence of US troops was put into question after a lightning insurgency ousted Assad on Dec. 8, ending his family’s decades long rule.
US forces have worked with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces on operations against ISIS, providing cover for the group that Türkiye considers an affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which it identifies as a terror organization.
The Syrian transitional government is still taking shape, and uncertainty remains on what that will mean going forward.
The SDF “have been good partners. At some point, the SDF may very well be absorbed into the Syrian military and then Syria would own all the (ISIS detention) camps and hopefully keep control of them,” Austin said. "But for now I think we have to protect our interests there.”