Ill winds engulf the region

Drivers navigate through low visibility in Damascus. Sana / AP Photo

The sandstorm did not deter these young Syrians from a game of table football in the streets of Homs. Omar Sanadiki / Reuters

Lebanese supporters watch a 2018 World Cup qualifier against South Korea in Sidon. Reuters

A boy sleeps among the rubble of Gaza City. Suhaib Salem / Reuters

A Palestinian walks past the Dome of the Rock in the Al Aqsa Mosque compound in the Old City of Jerusalem. Meteorologists said the dust had swept in from Iraq and Syria. Ahmad Gharabli / AFP

A killer sandstorm, so large that it could be seen from space, wreaked havoc as it blasted through the Middle East last week.

Terrifying, horrific, mysterious and deadly. Those are just some of the words used to describe the giant sandstorm, so large that it could be seen from space, which engulfed a large part of the Middle East last week. It left 12 people dead and many hundreds more suffering from respiratory illnesses.

The plume of dust swept into the region on Monday, shrouding large parts of Lebanon, Israel and Cyprus in a dense orange cloud. It led to the closure of schools and the grounding of aircraft.

Egypt closed four ports in Suez province because of poor visibility from the storm, and authorities advised the public, especially the young, elderly and those suffering from heart or respiratory diseases, to stay inside or to wear face masks whenever venturing outside.

For the beleaguered people of Syria, the storm should have offered some respite as government warplanes and helicopters carried out fewer air strikes. But according to Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, at least six people in the country died from respiratory failure associated from the storm’s effects.

“There were four in Deir Ezzor, including a child and an elderly woman, as well as another child in Hama province and a person in Deraa,” the monitor said.

Responding to satellite imagery of the event, Mouin Hamzeh, the secretary general of Lebanon’s national council for scientific research, said it was clear that “the sandstorm came from northern Iraq in the direction of central and northern Lebanon, north and east Syria, and southern Turkey”.

An official from the Cypriot meteorological service said that a “low pressure system from the Iraq area has resulted in bringing the dust from Syria to our region”.

Whatever the origins and reasons for the storm, experts across the region agreed on its unexpectedness and severity.

“I don’t remember a time when such a large quantity of dust arrived from the direction of Syria, all without powerful winds,” said Prof Daniel Rosenfeld, a climate expert from Jerusalem.

“The major dust storms usually arrive in the end of winter from North Africa and are accompanied by strong winds.”

This latest severe sandstorm is not the first to capture the headlines this year. In February, sandstorms engulfed Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and Egypt causing record levels of air pollution.

At the beginning of April, winds reaching 110 kph swept clouds of sand across the Arabian Peninsula, whipping-up 4-metre waves in the Arabian Gulf, reducing visibility levels, disrupting traffic and delaying flights.

Later that month, an intense, apocalyptic-looking dust storm, known as a “haboob” in Arabic, struck Belarus when a cold front moved in from the Ukrainian-Belarusian border, plunging skies around Minsk into darkness.