Five days without water: Iraq’s Dhi Qar faces ‘catastrophic’ collapse
Shafaq News – Dhi Qar
A severe water shortage has left more than 100,000 residents in Dhi Qar province without drinking water for five days, officials told Shafaq News on Wednesday.
Provincial Council member Abdul Baqi Kadhim described the situation as catastrophic, saying residents are crying out for help “like people on the verge of death.”
Al-Islah and Sayyid Dakhil—the two hardest-hit districts—sit on an alluvial plain where wells produce only saline water, he explained, urging the deployment of emergency tankers and engineering teams from the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), a coalition of Iran-aligned, Shia-majority armed groups. Dhi Qar itself is a Shia-dominant province.
Al-Islah district chief Haider Jamal told Shafaq News that the water complex supplying both districts is receiving inadequate flows. He appealed to caretaker Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani to secure sufficient allocations, warning of an “environmental and humanitarian catastrophe.”
The crisis stems from climate-driven drops in water reaching the province, particularly in the Gharraf basin, according to Dhi Qar Water Authority Director Ahmed Aziz, who said that low river levels have severely affected tail-end areas, although the authority has extended intake pipes to draw water from “more stable sources.”
“People, animals, and plants alike are dying today in Al-Islah,” residents told our agency.
Dhi Qar’s buffalos, a key livestock in southern Iraq, collapsed in population from 21,000 to 10,000 between 2023 and 2025 due to water scarcity. Nearly 85 percent of marshland fish stocks have also been wiped out, an official told Shafaq News earlier.
Iraq remains among the countries most vulnerable to climate change, a 2024 United Nations (UN) assessment noted, with 90 percent of surface water contaminated and about 37,000 people displaced by climate-related shortages.
Read more: Iraq’s water crisis deepens: Reserves collapse, mismanagement continues
