DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — For the primary time in over a decade, 270 Syrians traveled on a right away flight early Tuesday from Damascus to Saudi Arabia for the yearly Islamic Hajj pilgrimage, the Syrian Transportation Ministry stated.
The improvement is a part of an ongoing thaw in family members between Damascus and Riyadh, which days in the past appointed Saudi Arabia’s first ambassador to war-torn Syria since severing ties in 2012.
Syria used to be readmitted to the 22-member Arab League in 2023, after it have been suspended from the crowd for greater than a decade over President Bashar Assad’s brutal crackdown on anti-government protesters in 2011. Maximum nations within the Arab global have since restored diplomatic ties with Damascus.
A 2d airplane of pilgrims is ready to go away from Damascus to Jeddah overdue Tuesday, the ministry stated.
1.8 million Muslims from around the globe took phase in remaining 12 months’s Hajj pilgrimage to the holy town of Mecca, making it one of the vital global’s biggest non secular gatherings. This 12 months, it’s scheduled to start out at the night time of June 14.
The Hajj is among the 5 pillars of Islam, and Muslims are required to adopt it once or more of their lives if they’re bodily and financially in a position to take action.
The uprising-turned-civil conflict in Syria, now in its 14th 12 months has killed just about part 1,000,000 other folks and displaced part of the rustic’s prewar inhabitants of 23 million. The conflict has in large part remained frozen and so have the efforts to discover a viable political option to finish it. Poverty is rampant around the entrance strains, with help dwindling and a rising collection of nations sounding the alarm on surging migration.
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Related Press author Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut contributed to this document.
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