Airports and public administration offices have been closed, and university and school examinations have been suspended as around two thousand people have been admitted to hospitals due to a new dust storm that hit Iraq, following a series of similar storms that have been affecting the country for about a month, according to Agence France-Presse.
In a scene that Iraqis have started to get used to, layers of yellow sand covered buildings, parked cars in the streets, and household furniture on Monday morning, as observed by AFP reporters. Thick clouds of dust limited visibility to just a few meters.
In a statement, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Health, Saif Al-Badr, announced that at least two thousand cases were admitted to “our healthcare institutions of varying severity.” In the emergency department of Sheikh Zayed Hospital in Baghdad, 20 men, mostly elderly, were lying on beds breathing through oxygen masks, alongside their relatives.
The hospital has received 75 patients for oxygen treatment since dawn, according to emergency department official Talib Abdul-Munim Najm. He explained, "Most of the recorded cases are chronic cases. There are elderly patients suffering from chronic diseases such as heart diseases."
