ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Ever struggled to find your way around Erbil? The city could soon appear on Google Street View thanks to the efforts of a local firm.

The Hemn Group is deploying six special vehicles to offer a 3D rendering of the Kurdistan Region capital to be uploaded to the tech giant’s mapping service. 

“We have finished working on the 100-meter and 120-meter ring roads, as well as in the Italian villages one and two,” said Ahmed Mohammad Mustafa, who is overseeing the project.

“After Eid al-Fitr, we will also work on the 30-meter and 40-meter ring roads.” 

He expects the project to be complete and submitted to Google within a year. 

The project is solely the work of the Hemn Group, which claims to be a “Trusted Photographer” providing user generated content. 

An earlier version of this story erroneously claimed Google was directly involved and that Mustafa is a Google employee. 

“Unfortunately, this is not true. We have no plans to drive Street View cars in Erbil at the moment," a Google spokesperson in the Middle East and North Africa told Rudaw via email on Monday.

“However, Google Street View enables users to upload 3D level imagery of their cities to Google Maps. Imagery uploaded by Google cars or equipment is clearly labeled as ‘Google Street View’. 

Photos by Bilind T. Abdullah, translation by Sarkawt Mohammed

This story was corrected on May 25, 2020 to remove reference to Google's involvement in the scheme.