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28 March 2024

Video: Celebrations across Dubai after winning Expo 2020 bid

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By Agencies

Thousands of residents and tourists in Dubai celebrated on Wednesday as the city won the right to host the World Expo 2020.

The celebrants set off fireworks from the world's tallest tower the Burj Khalifa in the heart of Dubai, the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The 828-meter tower shined in the blue colors of Dubai's Expo 2020 logo, before fireworks started to rise into the clear night sky over the Gulf Arab metropolis.

Thousands of tourists and visitors poured into the adjacent Dubai Mall, the world's biggest shopping center to record the spectacle with their smart phones.



"We will say in the world and the history: Dubai won the Expo 2020. And we say it to everyone, to everybody, welcome to Dubai!" said Ahmed Abu Bakr Emirati, a Dubai resident.

Dubai on Wednesday won the bid to host the World Expo 2020 at the 154th General Assembly of the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) in Paris.

Dubai beat three other candidates, the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo, Russia's Yekaterinburg and Turkey's Izmir after three rounds of voting.

The Expo 2020 will be the first one to be held in the Middle East.



The Dubai government said earlier in the month that the Expo 2020 would create an estimated 277,000 new jobs and bring in 84 billion Dirham or 22.90 billion U.S. dollars.

"So when I look from today forward, when I look into the future, I see that Dubai simply is gonna be bringing more and more people in and giving them a even greater chance to succeed," said Weir Tommy, the Managing Director of the Emerging Markets Leadership Center.

Dubai is home to around 2.2 million people of which 90 percent are foreigners. The emirate has established its economy as a hub for trade, tourism, banking and civil aviation in the Middle East.