© HAIDAR HAMDANI/AFP/Getty Images
Shiite Muslim pilgrims walk through a dust storm in Najaf, southern Iraq, Oct. 30, 2017.
On Nov. 3, NASA published
clear images taken by its satellites of the severe dust storm that hit Iraq recently. The
climate changes sweeping Iraq are causing human casualties and economic damages. Hundreds of
cases of suffocation were recorded.
The Ministry of Health announced Oct. 30 that there were more than 4,200 cases of suffocation in most governorates, including 528 in Karbala. During the dust storm, the Iraqi Civil Aviation Authority canceled its flights, and Iranian flights to
Baghdad and Najaf airports were also canceled. Ninevah province recorded 1,108 cases of suffocation in the camps for internally displaced persons.
The storms also affected the
course of the battles between the Iraqi forces and the Islamic State (IS). On Oct. 31, the Iraqi forces were forced to postpone the campaign aimed to retrieve the city of Qaim, west of Anbar, from IS because of the lack of visibility caused by the dust storms.
While
dust storms are occurring in neighboring countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and even
Iran, "Iraq is one of the most affected countries by the storm, at the level of its environment, individuals' health and economy," said
Amer Habib of the Technical College Musayyib in Babil province and the director of a project on organic fertilizers in Babil. "This is due to the fact that
Iraq is a barren land where vegetation is scarce. Human activities have swept away orchards and agricultural lands, which also led to the decrease of the rivers' water levels and the lack of rainfall, which resulted in the drying up of huge areas of agricultural spaces."
Comment: Dozens of record low temperatures have been recorded in the past few days across the US Northeast and Midwest while New York City set a 103 year old cold record.