Baghdad Airport suspends Sunday flights due to sandstorm
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Over 5,000 people reported breathing troubles after the most recent sandstorm in May
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Sandstorms have been hitting Iraq since March
Baghdad International Airport has made the decision to suspend all of its flights on Sunday because of a sandstorm that has caused poor visibility on the runway.
"We notify all passengers and airlines about the suspension of flights on Sunday due to weather conditions and visibility of 450 meters," the airport’s press office said in a statement.
Iraq has been battered by sandstorms since March. The harsh weather conditions have caused health problems among the Iraqi people, with many going to hospitals after feeling suffocation.
Iraq's previous two sandstorms killed one person and sent nearly 10,000 people to the hospital with respiratory problems.
Iraq's airports occasionally have to suspend their operations on account of poor visibility caused by adverse weather conditions, and government agencies and educational institutions announce extra days off on those days.
Although dust storms are not alien to Iraq when spring and summer roll around, meteorologists expect them to become more frequent "due to drought, desertification and declining rainfall," the director of Iraq's meteorological office, Amer Al-Jabri, said after one particularly nasty storm in April.
The storms, furthermore, may exacerbate the economic crisis in a country still recovering from the two-decade-long war waged by Washington.
