A extreme sandstorm has swept throughout central and southern Iraq over the past two days, turning the sky a wierd orange, lowering visibility in some locations to lower than a half mile and sending a number of thousand folks to emergency rooms with respiratory issues.
Two airports suspended flights due to poor visibility, and the often crowded highways of Basra, the most important metropolis within the nation’s south, have been practically empty as excessive winds whipped via the palm timber and aboveground electrical traces.
The spokesman for Iraq’s meteorology division, Amir al-Jabri, stated that the “heavy waves of mud” had blown throughout the nation after originating in jap Saudi Arabia, a largely desert space, and selecting up extra particles in southwestern Iraq, which is equally arid.
Though sandstorms have lengthy been a characteristic of Iraq’s winter and early spring, local weather specialists say the storms have gotten extra frequent and extreme because the nation and neighboring Syria expertise longer and extra frequent droughts and as desertification engulfs larger and larger areas of once-fertile land.
The storm was the worst up to now in Iraq in 2025, however a equally severe storm paralyzed Baghdad in December, and there have been a number of extreme sandstorms in 2022.
The United Nations counts Iraq because the fifth most vulnerable country to some features of local weather change, together with excessive temperatures and the diminishing availability of water.
Though the storm abated on Tuesday and temperatures have been a bit decrease, southern Iraq was experiencing each day highs of greater than 100 levels earlier than the sandstorm obscured the solar, lowering the temperature.
Throughout the newest storm, many individuals donned face masks for defense, particularly law enforcement officials and emergency staff who have been working exterior, whereas others wrapped cloths round their mouths.
The sand and dirt have been so pervasive that they penetrated nearly each home and automobile, coming via the smallest cracks to coat each floor, making it troublesome to work on computer systems and forcing nearly all however emergency staff to remain indoors.
Iraq’s well being ministry spokesman, Saif al-Badr, stated that emergency rooms throughout the south had acquired 3,747 circumstances of Iraqis struggling respiratory issues on account of the storm. Greater than 1,000 of these have been recorded in Basra, the place the storm was particularly extreme on Monday, and 451 have been in Najaf, a much smaller metropolis, he stated.
Additionally badly affected have been residents of Muthanna Province, which shares a protracted border with Saudi Arabia, he stated, including that many of the hundreds who have been handled for respiratory issues had been launched.
The Basra police division put out an inventory of storm directions, together with one directed at households: “Because the storm is accompanied by scary sounds for younger kids, mother and father ought to clarify what is occurring in order that their little one can sleep soundly.”
