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Contaminated water delays Sinai canal

Despite demands to accelerate development and land reclamation projects in the Sinai Peninsula, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi postpones plans for a crucial canal due to health concerns.
Bedouin women work in a field of Miramiya plant (East Mediterranean sage) in the town of Sheikh Zoueid, near Rafah city, north Sinai, March 7, 2012. REUTER/Asmaa Waguih  (EGYPT - Tags: SOCIETY) - RTR2Z01J
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CAIRO — Despite public demands for the development process in the Sinai Peninsula to be accelerated and for the land reclamation plan to be completed to encourage Egyptians to stay and live in Sinai, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has ordered the government to stop pumping water into al-Salam Canal. Sisi also ordered that the project be delisted from the first step of a plan to reclaim 4 million acres of land, refusing to allow a project that would supply the canal with polluted wastewater.

Al-Salam Canal was a project adopted by in 1989 by then-President Hosni Mubarak; it aimed to supply Sinai with water and reclaim 620,000 acres of land located to the west and east of the Suez Canal. It also had the aim of establishing towns, with full services, which would host 3 million Egyptians. These services include hospitals, schools and markets in addition to electricity, transport, water and arable land.

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