New Saudi-Oman highway to reduce distance by 800 km

October 9, 2015

Riyadh, Oct 9: Saudi Arabia and Oman have completed the construction of a mega road project linking the two countries.

“The new road, which will cut the distance between Saudi Arabia and Oman by about 800 km, will be opened soon for public,” said Ahmad Hilal Al-Busaidi, Omani ambassador, Wednesday.

Al-Busaidi said the two countries were currently building the administrative infrastructures including immigration posts and check points across the two ends of the road. “This has delayed the inauguration of the road project,” said the diplomat, adding that this will be first overland direct link between the two countries.

Oman and Saudi Arabia are currently linked via road through the UAE, spanning a total distance of 2,000 km. He said that travelers shuttling between Saudi Arabia and Oman would no longer need to cross the UAE.

The Kingdom has spent about SR1.6 billion on the motorway that passes through the eastern Saudi province of Al-Ahsa and the Rub' al-Khali desert (Empty Quarter) ending at Oman border.

The road inside Oman is around 160 km long, starting from Tanam in Ibri province, passing through oilfields until it reaches the Oman-Saudi border in the Empty Quarter.

“The road has a direct access to south Oman,” said the diplomat.

Inside Saudi Arabia, the road is 519-km long, including a 247-km stretch from the Omani border to Shaybah and the 319-km stretch from Shaybah to the Batha-Haradh road, which leads to Al-Kharj and then to Riyadh.

Al-Rosan Contracting, which had been commissioned to build 256 km of the road on the Saudi side, said the project had been a big challenge because the road is constructed through shifting sands across the Rub’ al Khali Desert, the largest and most barren sand desert in the world covering 600,000 square kilometers.

“Trying to build a road on shifting sand dunes was always going to be difficult. The project involved building sand bridges across salt flats and high rising dunes, so the selection of adaptable and reliable equipment was critical for this project, not least because of the aggressive environment, intense heat, sand and remoteness of the site,” an Al-Rosan manager was quoted as saying in a statement by Volvoce.com.

The statement said FAMCO (Al-Futtaim Auto & Machinery Co. LLC) is the equipment contracting partner of Al-Rosan in the project and it has used 95 Volvo machines, including a range of articulated haulers, excavators and motor graders, through the several stages of the project.

“The construction of the 256 km road was completed in sections and involved gigantic amounts of sand ‘cut and fill’. The sand transported to construct the bridge was 130 million m3 — the equivalent of 26 giant pyramids — and 12 million m3 of material was needed to protect the embankment of sand from wind and water,” it said.

Spelling out the features of this project, Al-Busaidi said: “The opening of the road will create trade and investment opportunities besides boosting tourism between the two countries.”

This new road project will also help vehicles including trailers laden with goods to reach fast to their destinations in the Kingdom or in Oman, he added.

He said that Oman, being a GCC member, seeks to promote relations with the Kingdom in all sectors. The new project will help the Kingdom to be well connected with the strategic cities and towns in Oman, which also shares borders with the UAE and Yemen as well as marine borders with Iran and Pakistan.

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UN condemns Israeli regime’s ‘organized torture’ against Palestinians

News Network

November 30,2025

The United Nations Committee against Torture (CAT) has condemned the Israeli regime for enforcing a policy of “organized torture” against Palestinians.

In a report published on Friday, CAT stated that the occupying regime enforces a deliberate policy of “organized and widespread torture and ill-treatment” against Palestinian abductees, particularly since October 7, 2023, when Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza.

The committee expressed “deep concern over repeated severe beatings, dog attacks, electrocution, water-boarding, use of prolonged stress positions [and] sexual violence” inflicted on Palestinians.

Palestinian prisoners were degraded by “being made to act like animals or being urinated on,” systematically denied medical care, and subjected to excessive restraints, “in some cases resulting in amputation,” the report added.

CAT also condemned the routine application of “unlawful combatants law” to justify the prolonged detention without trial of thousands of Palestinian men, women, and children.

More than 10,000 Palestinians, including women and children, are currently held in Israeli prisons, according to Palestinian and international human rights groups, with 3,474 Palestinians in “administrative detention,” meaning they are imprisoned without trial for indefinite periods.

The report highlighted the “high proportion of children who are currently detained without charge or on remand,” noting that while Israel sets the age of criminal responsibility at 12, even younger children have been abducted.

Children designated as security prisoners face severe restrictions on family contact, may be subjected to solitary confinement, and are denied access to education, in clear violation of international law.

The committee further suggested that Israel’s policies across the Occupied Territories constitute collective torture against the Palestinian population.

“A range of policies adopted by Israel in the course of its continued unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory amounts to cruel, inhuman or degrading living conditions for the Palestinian population,” the report said.

On Thursday, the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas condemned the systematic killing and torture of Palestinian abductees in Israeli prisons, urging international action to halt these abuses.

Citing human rights data, Hamas stated that 94 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli prisons since the start of Tel Aviv’s genocidal war on Gaza.

“This reflects an organized criminal approach that has turned these prisons into direct killing grounds to eliminate our people,” the resistance movement said.

Hamas called on the international community, the UN, and human rights organizations to immediately pressure Israel to end crimes against prisoners and uphold their rights as guaranteed by all international conventions and norms.

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