Iraq's Mosul residents without water as pipeline destroyed

Water supplies to about 650,000 residents of the Iraqi city of Mosul have been cut off after a pipeline was hit during fighting between the Iraqi army and the Daesh militants, a local Iraqi official said on Tuesday.

“The maintenance team cannot reach the pipeline because it lies in an area being fought over”, Hussam Al-Abar, a member of Mosul’s Nineveh provincial council, told Reuters in one of the 15 districts and suburbs of the city where running water halted.

“There is a big shortage of drinking water, we are facing a humanitarian catastrophe”, Abar added.

He noted that authorities were sending some 70-tank water trucks a day to areas controlled by the army, but Daesh had attacked some of the trucks.

“Basic services such as water, electricity, health, food are non-existent”, he said standing in an eastern suburb while mortars fired inside the city.