{"id":29962,"date":"2019-01-21T01:23:59","date_gmt":"2019-01-21T01:23:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=29962"},"modified":"2019-01-21T01:23:59","modified_gmt":"2019-01-21T01:23:59","slug":"iraqi-pm-makes-first-visit-to-protest-hit-basra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=29962","title":{"rendered":"Iraqi PM makes first visit to protest-hit Basra"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-io-article-url=\"http:\/\/www.arabnews.com\/node\/1438591\/middle-east\" readability=\"45\">\n<p>\nBAGHDAD: Iraqi premier Adel Abdel Mahdi visited Basra on Sunday, his first trip as prime minister to the southern province where lagging services spawned a water crisis and deadly protests last summer.<br \/>Abdel Mahdi\u2019s office said he visited several infrastructure and service projects in the oil-rich province, including water provision services in the Shatt Al-Arab area.<br \/>\u201cHe called for redoubled efforts so these projects can be accomplished as quickly as possible,\u201d his office said.<br \/>In the summer of 2018, an unprecedented water crisis in Basra left 100,000 people hospitalized and sparked a massive protest movement that resulted in a dozen dead.<br \/>The provincial capital is still rocked by demonstrations every Friday demanding more access to drinking water, steady electricity and jobs for unemployed youth.<br \/>After his appointment in October, Abdel Mahdi pledged to present a plan to fulfill these demands within his first 100 days in office.<br \/>But it has yet to be announced and the premier is still struggling to finalize the formation of his cabinet.<br \/>The real test, observers say, will be Iraq\u2019s sweltering summer months, when temperatures rise to more than 50 degrees Celsius and shortages of water and electricity can be life threatening.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BAGHDAD: Iraqi premier Adel Abdel Mahdi visited Basra on Sunday, his first trip as prime minister to the southern province where lagging services spawned a water crisis and deadly protests last summer.Abdel Mahdi\u2019s office said he visited several infrastructure and service projects in the oil-rich province, including water provision services in the Shatt Al-Arab area.\u201cHe&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":29963,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29962\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}