The Iraqi transport minister has harnessed the works of a Jewish author of books about ancient astronauts to strengthen his claim that the first airport was built 5,000 years ago in the southern Iraqi region of Dhi Qar, and that it was from there that ancient Sumerian spaceships set off to explore other planets.

“If you do not believe me, read the book of the great historian Zecharia Sitchin, who was an expert in Sumerian studies,” Kazem Finjan told various Iraqi TV channels last week, in reference to the Russian-born American who was raised in mandatory Palestine and who moved to New York in 1952 after working as an editor and journalist in Israel.

In his 1976 book “The 12th Planet” and its sequels, Sitchin, a self-taught Sumerian expert, described a planet called Nibiru that was home to extra-terrestrial beings, who came to earth some 450,000 years ago on a colonial mission and subsequently interbred with native earthlings.

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Although scientists have rejected his ideas, his books have been read by millions.

“This is the safest place for airplanes to land and take off because some meteorological factors that limit an airplane’s maneuvering ability do not exist in the Dhi Qar airport,” Finjan said, according to a clip and translation posted Wednesday by the Middle East Media Research Institute (Memri).

“The atmosphere throughout Dhi Qar is positive….When the Sumerians settled here, they knew full well that the atmosphere here was suitable for flying to outer space. It was from here that the Sumerian spaceships took off towards the other planets.”

“The Sumerians were the first to discover the 12th planet, which was acknowledged a few days ago by NASA and named Nibiru, and which completes its orbit around the sun every 3,600 years.”

Nasa has said “Nibiru and other stories about wayward planets are an Internet hoax.”

Dhi Qar was the center of the ancient Iraqi civilization of Sumer, and includes the ruins of Ur, mentioned in the book of Genesis as the birthplace of the patriarch Abraham.