Basic designs for Kirkuk city completed

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: The regional director of a British company said that the basic designs for Kirkuk city have been completed and will soon be submitted to local authorities. Yesterday, Kirkuk Governor Abdelrahman Mustafa met with the company’s regional director, according to a statement released by the national media center and received by IraqiNews.com. The statement did not mention the cost of the project, which took 16 months to complete. Kirkuk, 250 km (156 miles) north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, sits on the ruins of a 5,000-year-old settlement. Because of the strategic geographical location of the city, Kirkuk was the battle ground for three empires, Assyria, Babylonia and Media which controlled the city at various times. Kirkuk is the centre of the northern Iraqi petroleum industry. It is a historically and ethnically mixed city populated by Assyrians, Kurds, Arabs and Iraqi Turkmen. The population was estimated at 1,200,000 in 2008. SS (P) 1