A extreme sandstorm has swept throughout central and southern Iraq during the last two days, turning the sky an odd orange, lowering visibility in some locations to lower than a half mile and sending a number of thousand individuals 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, had been almost empty as excessive winds whipped via the palm bushes and aboveground electrical strains.
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 japanese Saudi Arabia, a largely desert space, and selecting up further particles in southwestern Iraq, which is equally arid.
Though sandstorms have lengthy been a function of Iraq’s winter and early spring, local weather consultants 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 to this point 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 points of local weather change, together with excessive temperatures and the diminishing availability of water.
Though the storm abated on Tuesday and temperatures had been a bit decrease, southern Iraq was experiencing every day highs of greater than 100 levels earlier than the sandstorm obscured the solar, lowering the temperature.
Throughout the latest storm, many individuals donned face masks for cover, particularly cops and emergency staff who had been working exterior, whereas others wrapped cloths round their mouths.
The sand and mud had been so pervasive that they penetrated virtually each home and automobile, coming via the smallest cracks to coat each floor, making it tough to work on computer systems and forcing virtually 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 instances of Iraqis struggling respiratory issues because of the storm. Greater than 1,000 of these had been recorded in Basra, the place the storm was particularly extreme on Monday, and 451 had been in Najaf, a much smaller metropolis, he stated.
Additionally badly affected had been residents of Muthanna Province, which shares a protracted border with Saudi Arabia, he stated, including that a lot of the hundreds who had 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: “For the reason that storm is accompanied by horrifying sounds for younger youngsters, dad and mom ought to clarify what is going on in order that their baby can sleep soundly.”
