Thursday 07 November 2024 - 13:55

Date: 27 February 2020 , 17:55

News ID: 8504

NEWS SERVICE: TRANSPORTATION and INFRASTRUCTURE

Aviation and Airports Aviation & Airports

Spokesman: Flights from UAE to Iran to Resume Soon

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Seyed Abbas Mousavi announced on Thursday that Iranian airliners will resume flights from the UAE to the country in the near future.

Thanks to conducted negotiations and issued permissions, Iranian airliners will soon resume flights from the United Arab Emirates, Mousavi said.

Asked about the sudden and unannounced halting of Iranian flights from and to the United Arab Emirates, Mousavi said the Iranian ministry has done all its efforts to bring back Iranians from Emirates and resume the flights in near future.

UAE halted all Iran flights over fears of coronavirus epidemic.

The UAE, home to long-haul carriers Emirates and Etihad, is a key international transit route for Iran's 80 million people.

The new coronavirus is spreading rapidly in the Middle East, with cases recorded in at least nine countries in the region - six of them reported their first infections only in the past week.

Officially known as COVID-19, the disease has spread to 34 countries and killed more than 2,700 people globally, the vast majority in China where the virus first emerged in late December.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) was the first country in the Middle East to register a case of COVID-19. On January 29, the UAE's health ministry said four members of a Chinese family who arrived from Wuhan, the Chinese city at the epicentre of the outbreak, had tested positive for the virus. Another nine cases have since been confirmed.

On February 19, Iran said two elderly people had died in the city of Qom after testing positive for the virus. Authorities have since reported 245 infections and 26 deaths.