German airline Lufthansa is to resume passenger flights to Baghdad at the end of September.

The airline will fly from Munich to the Iraqi capital from 30 September after a 20-year-long break.

Lufthansa plans to fly four times a week to Baghdad using a Boeing 737 aircraft operated by Swiss-based PrivatAir.

The new route will be Lufthansa’s eleventh new route to be added to its flight network from Munich this year. The carrier also began flights to Irbil in northern Iraq in April from its hub in Frankfurt.

The carrier first began flying to Baghdad between 1956 and 1990 when it stopped its service due to the first Gulf War.

Lufthansa carried a total of 1.56 million passengers to the Middle East and Africa in the first four months of 2010, a 41 per cent increase on the same time the previous year.