Saudi Arabia’s king has announced that a bridge linking the country to Egypt will be built over the Red Sea. King Salman said in a statement that the bridge would boost commerce between the two allies. He made the announcement during the second day of his visit to the Egyptian capital, Cairo. Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries have supported Egypt with billions of dollars since General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi took power in 2013 by ousting the elected president Mohammed Morsi, BBC reported. King Salman’s visit comes amid recent strains in the relationship, with Sisi taking a less hardline stance against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Riyadh seeking more support from Cairo for its war against rebels in Yemen. Sisi said the bridge would be named after the Saudi king and it marked “a new chapter on the road of Arab joint action”. A Red Sea bridge linking the two countries has been proposed several times before but has failed to become a reality. Previous estimates for the bridge project suggested a cost of around $3-4 billion.
