An Italian group will begin construction in a month’s time on what will become Iraq’s largest shipping port, the Iraqi transport minister announced Monday.
The facility at Fao, at the southernmost tip of the country, will be fed by a new rail line linking it to the Turkish border in the north, dramatically improving Iraq’s moribund transport infrastructure.”Fao, which will be built by an Italian consortium, will be the biggest port in Iraq,” Transport Minister Amer Abduljabbar Ismail said in a ceremony at Fao on the Gulf, 535 kilometres (335 miles) south of Baghdad.