SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Flights between Iran and Iraq have been suspended due to an increase in number of coronavirus cases, an Iranian official said on Saturday (October 3).
“All flights of Iranian Airline companies and Iraqi Airway from Iran to Iraq and vice versa were cancelled until further notice,” head of Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization Touraj Dehghan Zanganeh said in an interview with Mehr news agency.
The flights were suspended due to the second wave of the virus outbreak in Iran, the official added.
Zanganeh further said there were limited number of flights between Iraq and Iran, operated by Iraqi Airways to return Iraqi citizens who were stranded in Iran.
Iran’s death toll from the coronavirus rose by 179 on Saturday to 26,746, and identified cases by 3,523 to 468,119, health ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari told state TV.
Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said those who do not wear face masks in public would be fined, adding the amount of fines and other penalties would be determined at the next meeting of the government-run coronavirus taskforce.
“Anyone who feels ill and it’s clear to them that they are ill, must not hide their illness,” Rouhani said in televised remarks. Otherwise, he added, they would be committing “the highest offense” that will demand “the highest punishment”.
Rouhani said penalties would be most severe in the capital Tehran, where in recent weeks the daily death toll from the coronavirus has been more than 100 compared with less than 10 at the end of the first wave of the virus earlier this year, according to Alireza Zali, head of the Tehran Coronavirus Taskforce.
