Honey festival starts in Duhuk

DUHUK / IraqiNews.com: The festival of honey started in Duhuk on Thursday with the participation of more than 70 beekeepers from different cities of Kurdistan region. “The three-day festival will witness the participation of beekeepers from Kirkuk , Sulaimaniya, Arbil and Duhuk and will show the best types of honey in Kurdistan ,” Khorshid Pirawmeri, the head of the organizing committee of the festival, told IraqiNews.com. “The festival is being organized by the association of Kurdistan’s beekeepers and with the support of the Regional Reconstruction Team (RRT) of the U.S. embassy in Baghdad the agriculture department in Duhuk,” he explained. Also spelled Duhok , Dohuk Dehok or Dahok ; it is a city in the far northern part of Iraq to the borders with Turkey . It has about 500,000 inhabitants, mostly consisting of Kurds and Assyrians. According to some sources, the name “Duhuk” comes from Kurmanji Kurdish meaning “small village”. Circled by mountains along the Tigris river, Duhuk, the third province with Iraq ‘s Kurdistan region, has a growing tourist industry. Its population grew extremely since the 1990s as the rural population moved to the cities. Since the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States , Duhuk and Iraqi Kurdistan in general have remained the only safe places for foreigners. SH (S) 1