New road in Arbil at $4m

ARBIL / IraqiNews.com: A local company has initiated work on a project to construct a new road in Arbil city at a cost of nearly $4 million U.S. dollars, Arbil mayor said on Sunday. “The project will be financed through Arbil’s provincial development budget,” Nozad Hadi told IraqiNews.com. The road will link the neighborhood of Badawa to Bansalawa district in eastern Arbil, the mayor explained. Arbil, also written Erbil or Irbil, is believed to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited in the world and is one of the largest cities in Iraq. The city lies eighty kilometers (fifty miles) east of Mosul. In 2005, its estimated population was 990,000 inhabitants. The city is the capital of the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region and the Kurdistan Regional Government Kurdistan RegionG). It hosts the headquarters of the Kurdistan region ministers and parliament. Since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, only isolated, sporadic violence has hit Arbil, unlike many other areas of Iraq. Parallel bomb attacks against the Eid celebrations arranged by the Iraqi President Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and Kurdistan RegionG President Massoud Barazani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) killed 109 people on February 1, 2004. Responsibility was claimed by the Islamist group Ansar al-Sunnah, and stated to be in solidarity with the Kurdish Islamist faction Ansar al-Islam. Another bombing on May 4, 2005 killed 60 civilians. Despite these bombings the population generally feels safe. SS (S) 1