Saudi tourism body to award museum, heritage contracts worth SR1.2 billion

Arab News

December 3, 2017

Riyadh, Dec 3: Nine museum and heritage projects will be awarded across the Kingdom at costs totaling more than SR433 million ($155 million), the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage (SCTH) has announced.

The SCTH said another five projects will also be awarded within the SCTH cultural heritage projects whose costs are more than SR1.4 billion.

SCTH President Prince Sultan bin Salman has patronized the signing of the contracts with a number of national companies.

The new projects included the establishment of new museums, development of existing ones, expansion of the National Museum, maintenance, fencing and posting of awareness notices in the archaeological and heritage sites in addition to other projects to rehabilitate a number of archaeological sites across the Kingdom.

The new projects come as part of King Salman’s program for cultural heritage in the Kingdom. There are now 230 projects covering heritage with its various components such as antiquities, museums, sites of Islamic history, urban heritage, and handicrafts, plus other components of the Kingdom’s heritage.

The new projects also included the design of museum exhibitions; executive plans for the rehabilitation of Al-Saqqaf Palace in Makkah region; expansion and development of the National Museum (first phase); design and preparation of the executive plans of the SCTH regional museums in Dammam, Tabuk, Baha, Hail, Jouf, Najran and Asir; museum projects in Al-Qasim, Arar, Tima and Ahsa, and the railway museum in Madinah; the rehabilitation project of Khuzam Palace and other historic and heritage buildings in Ahsa; and the rehabilitation of ten heritage buildings in Yanbu (first phase).

On the other hand, the maintenance, fencing and posting notices projects covered 300 sites across the Kingdom and the signing of operation and engineering contracts for museums and archaeological sites more than 130 locations in all parts of the Kingdom.

The projects also included the rehabilitation of the archaeological sites in Al-Jouf Region, including five sites in Skaka Province and another two in Domat-Al-Jandal Province.

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Israel orders 100,000 Palestinians to evacuate eastern Rafah ahead of ground invasion

News Network

May 6,2024

The Israeli regime is forcibly evacuating Palestinians from the eastern part of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip amid the prospect of its widely-discouraged ground invasion.

“The estimate is around 100,000 people,” an Israeli military spokesman told journalists on Monday when asked how many people were being evacuated.

International organizations, including the United Nations, have repeatedly warned the regime against invading the city, citing its hosting around 1.5 million Palestinian refugees.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said a ground assault on Rafah would “put the final nail in the coffin” for humanitarian aid operations in the Gaza Strip.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs also said, “Any ground operation would mean more suffering and death,” with an official saying “It could be a slaughter of civilians.”

Multiple aid agencies, including the Norwegian Refugee Council, have likewise warned against a Rafah offensive.

The NRC said such an invasion “would profoundly exacerbate the already catastrophic levels of need and the humanitarian emergency for millions of civilians with nowhere left to go.”

The official alleged Hamas had killed three Israeli forces on Sunday, attacking them from Rafah.

The evacuation order came a sat least 22 people lost their lives in the regime’s airstrikes killed in Rafah earlier on Monday.

Rafah’s evacuation “is part of our plans to dismantle Hamas,” the Israeli spokesman added, referring to the Palestinian resistance movement that has been defending Gaza in the face of the war.

The Palestinians have fled there from the ravages of a war that the regime began waging against Gaza on October 7, following a retaliatory operation by the coastal sliver’s resistance groups.

At least 34,683 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed and 78,018 others injured so far during the brutal military onslaught.

On Friday, Hossam Badran, a member of Hamas’ Political Bureau, said Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s insistence on carrying out a ground invasion of Rafah was a key stumbling block in negotiations aimed at a truce agreement.

The Israeli premier has said the regime would go ahead with invading the city “with or without” a truce.

Hamas has, however, asserted that the regime has failed to defeat the resistance during the war.

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