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Egypt has now digitized entry for visitors to 78 archaeological sites, museums

Egypt has now digitized entry for visitors to 78 archaeological sites, museums
This initiative ensures visitors receive the promised quality experience while maintaining the highest standards of security, safety, and health. (Egyptian Museum)
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Updated 10 June 2024
Layla Mohammed
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Egypt has now digitized entry for visitors to 78 archaeological sites, museums

Egypt has now digitized entry for visitors to 78 archaeological sites, museums
  • Significant online growth in ticket sales
Updated 10 June 2024
Layla Mohammed
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CAIRO: The Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities has said that entry to 78 archaeological sites and museums has now been digitized, with efforts still taking place to complete the transformation of all archaeological sites across the country.

The ministry has stressed its commitment to enhancing the tourist experience — particularly at archaeological sites and museums — which forms a key aspect of Egypt’s national tourism strategy.

This initiative ensures visitors receive the promised quality experience while maintaining the highest standards of security, safety, and health.

Sherif Khaled, an Egyptian archaeological expert, told Arab News: “The digitization of such a significant number of archaeological sites is extremely important. It greatly facilitates tourists’ access to services provided by these sites, from booking tickets to visiting the sites.”

Khaled elaborated on the electronic payment service for museum and archaeological site tickets, launched in 2021, which has seen considerable success and a substantial increase in the number of tickets sold online during this period.

He said: “Previously, all transactions were cash-based until 2021. Our collaboration has successfully transitioned to electronic payment methods which, as of early 2024, account for 99.6 percent of total collections. This shift has improved the speed and accuracy of transaction processing, making it easier for both Egyptian and foreign visitors.”

According to the ministry, the number of electronically-sold tickets was 178,554 in 2021; 7,819,703 in 2022; 18,842,234 in 2023; and 6,396,231 in the first four months of the current year.

Yumna Al-Falahi, an official at one of Egypt’s archaeological museums, told Arab News: “At the museum where I work, there are self-service machines for purchasing entrance tickets. This facility is available at several archaeological sites and museums, allowing visitors to buy tickets using their bank cards. This channel provides a new way to purchase tickets, in addition to buying them at ticket sales counters at museum entrances and through the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities’ official website.

“The machines were introduced at the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square this June, following their earlier implementation at the Valley of the Kings, the Pyramids of Giza, and the Karnak Temple.

“There is a proposal to develop a mobile app that would allow users to book entry visas to Egypt and all tourist services, including booking tickets for archaeological sites and museums via their phones, linked to the online booking system.

“The app would also allow booking of hotels and tourist restaurants, among other services, and provide a calendar of various cultural events organized and hosted in Egypt, along with promotional materials about different tourist destinations within the country. This app would make it significantly easier for tourists to enjoy their time in Egypt.”

Topics: Egypt

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Kyiv ready to supply food to Syria as Russia supplies suspended

People walk with food in plastic bags, after rebels seized the capital and ousted Syria's Bashar Assad, in Damascus on Thursday.
People walk with food in plastic bags, after rebels seized the capital and ousted Syria's Bashar Assad, in Damascus on Thursday.
Updated 42 min 53 sec ago
Reuters
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Kyiv ready to supply food to Syria as Russia supplies suspended

People walk with food in plastic bags, after rebels seized the capital and ousted Syria's Bashar Assad, in Damascus on Thursday.
  • Russian wheat supplies to Syria had been suspended over uncertainty about the new government
Updated 42 min 53 sec ago
Reuters

KYIV: Ukraine, a global producer and exporter of grain and oilseeds, is ready to supply food to Syria following the fall of Bashar Assad, Ukrainian Agriculture Minister Vitaliy Koval told Reuters on Friday.
Russian and Syrian sources said earlier that Russian wheat supplies to Syria had been suspended over uncertainty about the new government and payment delays.
Syria imported food from Russia during the Assad era and it is unclear how relations between Damascus and Moscow will take shape under the new government.
“Where it is difficult, we have to be there with our food. We are open to supplying our food and if Syria needs food — then we are there,” Koval told Reuters.
Ukraine’s exports were buffeted by Russia’s February 2022 invasion, which severely reduced shipments via the Black Sea. Ukraine has since broken a de facto sea blockade and revived exports from its southern ports of Odesa.
Kyiv traditionally exports wheat and corn to Middle Eastern countries, but not to Syria.
Traders say that only about 6,000 metric tons of Ukrainian corn reached the Syrian market in the 2023/24 season, out of a total corn export volume of 29.4 million tons.
However, small parcels of Ukrainian-origin grain may have reached Syria from neighboring countries, but not been captured by those statistics, analysts said.
Since the fall of Assad, a close Russian ally, Kyiv has voiced a desire to restore relations with Syria.
Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha said Kyiv was ready “to pave the way for the restoration of relations in the future and reaffirm our support for the Syrian people.”

Topics: Fall of Assad Ukraine Syria

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Blinken meets Iraq PM in unannounced stop on Syria crisis tour

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Blinken meets Iraq PM in unannounced stop on Syria crisis tour

Blinken meets Iraq PM in unannounced stop on Syria crisis tour
  • The top US diplomat flew to Baghdad from Ankara
Updated 13 December 2024
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BAGHDAD: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Iraq’s prime minister on Friday in an unannounced visit as he seeks to coordinate a regional approach to Syria following the overthrow of Bashar Assad.
The top US diplomat flew to Baghdad from the Turkish capital Ankara and headed into talks with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani, an AFP journalist traveling with Blinken said.

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Syrian Shiites and other minorities flee to Lebanon, fearing Islamist rule

Syrian Shiites and other minorities flee to Lebanon, fearing Islamist rule
Updated 13 December 2024
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Syrian Shiites and other minorities flee to Lebanon, fearing Islamist rule

Syrian Shiites and other minorities flee to Lebanon, fearing Islamist rule
  • Their accounts reflect fears of persecution despite promises of protection by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham
  • Shiite communities have often been on the frontline of Syria’s 13-year civil war
Updated 13 December 2024
Reuters

BEIRUT/NUBL: Tens of thousands of Syrians, mostly Shiite Muslims, have fled to Lebanon since Sunni Muslim Islamists toppled Bashar Assad, fearing persecution despite assurances from the new rulers in Damascus that they will be safe, a Lebanese official said.
At the border with Lebanon, where thousands of people were trying to leave Syria on Thursday, a dozen Shiite Muslims interviewed by Reuters described threats made against them, sometimes in person but mostly on social media.
Their accounts reflect fears of persecution despite promises of protection by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) — the Sunni Islamist group which has emerged as the dominant force in the new Syria but is far from being the only armed faction on the ground.
Shiite communities have often been on the frontline of Syria’s 13-year civil war, which took on sectarian dimensions as Assad, from the minority Alawite faith, mobilized regional Shiite allies, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah, to help fight Sunni militants.
The senior Lebanese security official said more than 100,000 people, largely members of minority faiths, had crossed into Lebanon since Sunday, but could not give an exact number because most of them had used illegal crossings along the porous border.
At the main border crossing between Syria and Lebanon, Samira Baba said she had been waiting for three days to enter Lebanon with her children.
“We don’t know who sent these threats, on WhatsApp and Facebook,” she said. “The militants in charge haven’t openly threatened us, so it could be other factions, or individuals. We just don’t know. But we know it’s time to leave,” she said.
The new Syria holds uncertainty for many, especially minorities. Shiites are thought to number around a tenth of the population, which stood at 23 million before the war began.
While HTS, which has cut its ties with the global jihadist network Al-Qaeda, is the most powerful of the constellation of factions that fought Assad, there are numerous other armed groups, many of which are Islamist.
Ayham Hamada, a 39-year-old Shiite who was serving in the army when Assad fell, said the government’s collapse was so sudden that it left him and his brother, also a soldier, scrambling to decide whether to stay or go.
They fled to Damascus where they received threats, he said, without elaborating. “We are afraid of sectarian killings... this will be liquidation.”
Despite assurances voiced by HTS leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa, Hamada said minorities have been left without protection after Assad’s sudden flight. “Bashar took his money and fled and didn’t pay attention to us,” he said.
Many of the Shiites at the border were from Sayyeda Zeinab, a Damascus district home to a Shiite shrine where fighters from Hezbollah and other Shiite militias were based. Supported by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, the Shiite militias also came from Iraq and Afghanistan, and recruited some Syrian Shiites.
Elham, a 30-year-old nurse, said she had been waiting at the crossing for days without food or water with her 10-day-old niece and two-year-old son.
A Shiite from Damascus, she said she fled to rural areas when the government fell. When she returned, she found her house looted and torched. She and others said that armed, masked men raided their homes and ordered them at gunpoint to leave, or be killed.
“They took our car because they said it’s theirs. You daren’t say a word. We left everything and fled.”
Reuters could not immediately reach HTS officials for comment on threats received by minorities.

’WE ARE ALL ONE PEOPLE’
In parts of Syria’s north, however, some residents who fled when HTS went on the offensive in late November said they now felt confident to return.
“My wife is Sunni. We are all one people and one nation,” Hussein Al-Saman, 48, a Shiite father of three told Reuters, next to the main mosque in the Shiite town of Nubl, where Hezbollah once stationed fighters.
He praised HTS leader Sharaa for his efforts to protect the community, saying he “enabled us to come to our houses.”
“We were a minority and didn’t have a choice but to stand with (Assad). But now that the war is over we are free... I hope for my children to just live comfortably under the new government.”
Bassam Abdulwahab, an official overseeing the returns, said essential services had been restored. “Security was provided to protect the minorities,” he said, adding that this “is the approach of the commanding leadership.”
“We carry the responsibility of protecting the minorities in Syria. What happens to us happens to them,” he said.
At the entrance to Nubl, a statue of Assad lay toppled. Further into the town, residents cleaned stores and repaired damaged buildings, while officials in military fatigues coordinated the return of those who had fled.
“The (Assad) government forced the minorities here to live in a situation where they had to be enemies of their neighbors,” said Muhyie Al-Dien, who works in mining. “The government played its game so it could divide us and our Sunni brothers.”
While some in Nubl spoke hopefully of the future, one 41-year-old man, who gave his name as Hami and declined to speak on camera, was more cautious. “We are Shiite and the new leadership is Sunni. We don’t know what will happen,” he said.

Topics: Fall of Assad shiite Sunni Lebanon Syrians

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‘Syria freed!’: thousands cheer at famed Damascus mosque

‘Syria freed!’: thousands cheer at famed Damascus mosque
Updated 13 December 2024
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‘Syria freed!’: thousands cheer at famed Damascus mosque

‘Syria freed!’: thousands cheer at famed Damascus mosque
  • At the capital’s famed Umayyad Mosque, men, women and children gathered to celebrate on the first Friday prayers since Assad’s ouster
  • The scenes were reminiscent of the early days of the 2011 uprising
Updated 13 December 2024
AFP

DAMASCUS: Thousands of Syrians converged on a landmark Damascus mosque for Friday prayers, waving opposition flags and chanting — a sight unimaginable just days ago before rebels ousted president Bashar Assad.
At the capital’s famed Umayyad Mosque, men, women and children gathered to celebrate on the first Friday prayers since Assad’s ouster, later streaming into the city streets and squares.
The scenes were reminiscent of the early days of the 2011 uprising, when pro-democracy protesters in Syrian cities would take to the streets after Friday prayers — but never in Damascus, long an Assad clan stronghold.
“We are gathering because we’re happy Syria has been freed, we’re happy to have been liberated from the prison in which we lived,” said Nour Thi Al-Ghina, 38.
“This is the first time we have converged in such big numbers and the first time we are seeing such an event,” she said, beaming with joy.
“We never expected this to happen.”
In 2011, Assad’s crackdown on peaceful protesters triggered a 13-year civil war that tore Syria apart, killing more than half a million people and displacing millions more.
Exhilarated crowds chanted “One, one, one, the Syrian people is one!” on Friday.
Some held the Syrian independence flag, used by the opposition since the uprising began.
Dozens of street vendors around the mosque were selling the three-star flags — which none would dare to raise in government-held areas during Assad’s iron-fisted rule.
Dozens of pictures of people who were disappeared or detained in Assad’s prisons hung on the mosque’s outer walls, the phone numbers of relatives inscribed on the images.
At the core of the system Assad inherited from his father Hafez was a brutal complex of prisons and detention centers used to eliminate dissent by jailing those suspected of stepping away from the ruling Baath party line.
War monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in 2022 that more than 100,000 people had died in the prisons since 2011.
Earlier Friday, the leader of the Islamist rebels that took power, Abu Mohammed Al-Jolani — who now uses his real name Ahmed Al-Sharaa — called on people to take to the streets to celebrate “the victory of the revolution.”
Last month, rebel forces led by his Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham group (HTS) launched a lightning offensive, seizing Damascus and ousting Assad in less than two weeks.
Omar Al-Khaled, 23, said he had rushed from HTS’s northwestern stronghold of Idlib, cut off from government areas for years, to see the capital for the first time in his life.
“It was my dream to come to Damascus,” the tailor said.
“I can’t describe my feelings. Our morale is very high and we hope that Syria will head toward a better future,” he said, adding: “People were stifled... but now the doors have opened to us.”
On Thursday, the interim government vowed to institute the “rule of law” after years of abuses under Assad.
Amani Zanhur, a 42-year-old professor of computer engineering, said many of her students had disappeared in Assad’s prisons and that she was overjoyed to be attending the prayers in the new Syria.
“There can be nothing worse than what was. We cannot fear the situation,” she told AFP, expressing support for a state based on Islamic teachings.
Thousands flocked to the nearby Umayyad Square, raising a huge rebel flag on its landmark sword monument and chanting.
“Let’s not discuss details that might separate us now and focus only on what brings us together: our hatred for Bashar Assad,” said Amina Maarawi, 42, an Islamic preacher wearing a white hijab.
Mohammed Al-Saad, 32, was overjoyed. The HTS political cadre in a smart jacket had come with colleagues from Idlib province to help set up the new government.
“We’ve been waiting 13 years for this,” he said. “We’ve come to get work started.”

Topics: Fall of Assad Umayyad Mosque Damascus

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Red Cross opens hotlines to try to reunite Syrian families

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Updated 13 December 2024
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Red Cross opens hotlines to try to reunite Syrian families

Red Cross opens hotlines to try to reunite Syrian families
  • Stephan Sakalian, head of delegation for ICRC in Syria, told reporters that it had opened two hotlines this week
  • “We can provide them with mental health and psychosocial support”
Updated 13 December 2024
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GENEVA: The Red Cross said on Friday it had opened two new telephone hotlines to try to reunite Syrians who have been missing for years with their families, but warned that many cases will take months or years to resolve.
Since the start of Syria’s civil war over 13 years ago, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has received over 35,000 cases of missing people and is stepping up its efforts to help trace them.
Stephan Sakalian, head of delegation for ICRC in Syria, told reporters that it had opened two hotlines this week: one for prisoners and one for families to try to connect them.
“We can provide them with mental health and psychosocial support ... we can even help them financially if they need to be reunited,” he told a Geneva press briefing via video link from Damascus. Legal aid and health care are also available, an ICRC statement said.
The opening of president Bashar Assad’s detention system has raised hopes for reunions, with some prisoners re-emerging who were thought by their families to have been executed years ago. But Sakalian sought to temper expectations.
“Let’s make no mistake: giving answers to people will take weeks, months and maybe years, given the amount of information to process,” he said. “The work is tremendous,” he added.
The ICRC is also looking for three of its colleagues who were abducted in 2013. “Like everyone we want to have hope and seek any signal or any news that may bring some closure to their families, but for the moment, we do not have any news,” he added.

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