After a break of 30 years, Saudi Arabia and Iraq agree to issue Hajj visas from Baghdad

The Iraqi government announced that it had reached an agreement with the Saudi authorities to provide Iraqi citizens with Hajj visas from the Kingdom’s embassy in Baghdad after

The Iraqi government announced that it had reached an agreement with the Saudi authorities to provide Iraqi citizens with Hajj visas from the Kingdom’s embassy in Baghdad after a halt to this operation for more than 30 years.

The Supreme Council for Hajj and Umrah said on Wednesday that its president, Khalid al-Attiyah, reached an agreement with the Saudi ambassador to Iraq, Abdulaziz bin Khalid al-Shammari, to grant visas to Iraqi pilgrims from the Saudi embassy in Baghdad.

“Al-Attiyah met with the Saudi ambassador in Baghdad … It was agreed that the granting of entry visas for Iraqi pilgrims from the embassy’s headquarters in Baghdad after a break for more than 30 years,” the official spokesman of the organization, Hassan Fahd al-Kanani, said in a press statement.

Kanani added that “the Authority has made great efforts to be granting visas to pilgrims from Baghdad, to facilitate this process and to gain the time and cost and effort that was made by the Authority every year, as the visas were granted from the Jordanian capital Amman.”

Al-Attiyah thanked Al-Shamri for his “great contribution in taking this important step that strengthens the bilateral relations between Iraq and Saudi Arabia and relieves the burden on the Authority.”