The first direct flights since 2017 between Qatar and Egypt and the UAE took to the skies on Monday, following the end of a regional crisis. Egypt and the UAE joined Saudi Arabia and Bahrain in cutting ties with Qatar in June 2017. The quartet agreed to heal the rift at a Gulf summit on January 5 in Saudi Arabia, after a flurry of diplomatic activity by outgoing US President Donald Trump’s administration. The first commercial flight from Qatar to Egypt in three and a half years, an EgyptAir service to Cairo, took off from windswept Doha airport. It was followed shortly after by the arrival of an Air Arabia flight from Sharjah in the UAE. — AFP
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