DIWANIYAH: Hundreds of Iraqi farmers protested Saturday against the government’s policy of curbing land cultivation to preserve dwindling water supplies, an AFP correspondent said.
Year-on-year droughts and declining rainfall have brought agriculture to its knees in a country still recovering from decades of war and chaos, and where rice and bread are diet staples.
Water scarcity has forced many farmers to abandon their plots, and authorities have drastically reduced farm activity to ensure sufficient drinking water for Iraq’s 46 million people.
In the Ghammas area in the southern province of Diwaniyah, hundreds of farmers, including from neighboring provinces, gathered to urge the government to allow them to farm their lands.
They called on the authorities to compensate them for their losses and distribute water for agriculture.
“We have come from four provinces to demand the rights and compensation owed to farmers,” one of the protesters, Mahmoud Saleh, said.
“The farmer has been wronged. They will not let us cultivate the wheat crop next year, and they have cut off water supplies,” he added.
Mohammed Amoush, who used to cultivate 100 dunum (25 hectares) of farms, said “our land has become fallow.”
“There is no agriculture, only financial loss. We are devastated,” he added.
Iraq’s historically fertile plains stretched along the once-mighty Tigris and Euphrates, but water levels have plummeted drastically over the past decades.
In addition to the drought, authorities also blame upstream dams in neighboring countries for reducing the rivers’ flow.
In recent weeks, the Euphrates has seen its lowest levels in decades, especially in the southern provinces, and water reserves in artificial lakes are at their lowest in the country’s recent history.
Iraq currently receives less than 35 percent of its share of the river water allocated according to preexisting agreements and understandings with neighboring countries, according to authorities.
Decades of war have also left the country’s water management systems in disrepair.
Iraqi farmers protest cultivation ban amid drought
https://arab.news/72644
Iraqi farmers protest cultivation ban amid drought
- Hundreds of Iraqi farmers protested Saturday against the government’s policy of curbing land cultivation to preserve dwindling water supplies, an AFP correspondent said
Israeli airstrike on a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon kills 13 people, Lebanese ministry says
- Hamas condemned the attack in a statement saying the strike hit a sports playground and denying that it was a training compound
- Lebanon’s Health Ministry has reported more than 270 people killed and around 850 wounded by Israeli military actions since the ceasefire
SIDON, Lebanon: An Israeli airstrike on a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon on Tuesday killed 13 people and wounded several others, state media and government officials said. It was the deadliest strike on Lebanon since a ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war a year ago.
The drone strike hit a car in the parking lot of a mosque in the Ein el-Hilweh refugee camp on the outskirts of the coastal city of Sidon, the state-run National News Agency said. The Lebanese Health Ministry said 13 people were killed and several others wounded in the airstrike, without giving further details.
Hamas fighters in the area prevented journalists from reaching the scene, as ambulances rushed to evacuate the wounded and the dead.
The Israeli military said it struck a Hamas training compound that was being used to prepare an attack against Israel and its army. It added that the Israeli army would continue to act against Hamas wherever the group operates.
Hamas condemned the attack in a statement saying the strike hit a sports playground and denying that it was a training compound.
Over the past two years, Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon have killed scores of officials from the militant Hezbollah group as well as Palestinian factions such as Hamas.
Saleh Arouri, the deputy political head of Hamas and a founder of the group’s military wing, was killed in a drone strike on a southern suburb of Beirut on Jan. 2, 2024. Several other Hamas officials have been killed in strikes since then.
Hamas led the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel that killed about 1,200 people. That sparked Israel’s offensive on the Gaza Strip that killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
A day after the Israel-Hamas war started, Hezbollah began firing rockets toward Israeli posts along the border. Israel responded with shelling and airstrikes in Lebanon, and the two sides became locked in an escalating conflict that became a full-blown war in late September 2024.
That war, the most recent of several conflicts involving Hezbollah over the past four decades, killed more than 4,000 people in Lebanon, including hundreds of civilians, and caused an estimated $11 billion worth of destruction, according to the World Bank. In Israel, 127 people died, including 80 soldiers.
The war ended in late November 2024 with a US-brokered ceasefire. Since then, Israel has carried out scores of airstrikes in Lebanon, saying that Hezbollah is trying to rebuild its capabilities.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry has reported more than 270 people killed and around 850 wounded by Israeli military actions since the ceasefire.
