Red Crescent to distribute supplies to stranded truck drivers

Near Al Sila: Officials from the Red Crescent Authority (RCA) are to begin distributing water and essential supplies to the thousands of long-distance truck drivers who remain stranded on Saturday morning at the UAE-Saudi Arabia border.

The queue of trucks waiting to enter Saudi Arabia stretches back along a desolate desert highway for some 35 kilometres, and drivers measure their progress in mere metres per hour.

Some, like Mohammad from Syria, carrying animal feed from Jebel Ali to Doha, have been waiting for three days while only moving several kilometres. His water tank under the trailer is nearly empty, and the blocks of ice in his cooling cabinet to keep his provisions edible are now mostly liquid.

The backlogs have been caused by strict security provisions and identity checks imposed by Saudi authorities, requiring the trucks to be painstaking unloaded and reloaded one by one as the drivers undergo identity checks.

Temperatures along the desolate stretch of desert highway hit 44C on Friday afternoon, forcing drivers to seek shade where they can. With diesel supplies also running low in the trucks, the drivers need to limit their engines' use.

Some, however, aren't as fortunate. By midday on Saturday, Jordanian driver Mohammad Abu Soubah will have to make a tough decision - either leave the queue to get fuel, or risk losing his Dh120,000 cargo of fresh fruit being hauled from Dubai to Amman. The refrigeration unit on his truck is keeping the fruit edible.