Boiling Basra: Residents afraid of their taps as Iraq's water crisis threatens to destabilise the region

Toxic water in Iraq’s oil-rich but water-poor south has hospitalised more than 90,000 people and sparked a wave of unrest. In the first in a new series, Water Wars, Bel Trew reports

Young protesters in Basra say they face death threats from Shia militias over their anti-government rallies

(Bel Trew)

Chunks of salt the size of fists clutch the pipes of the ramshackle home where Hamid Abdul-Wahib, 44, lives in Basra, Iraq, once dubbed the “Venice of the east” for its abundance of waterways.

His breeze-block hut in Kut al-Thawani, an impoverished suburb of the city, is one of many that edge a simmering soup of rubbish and sewage.

The father-of-six has long given up trying to claw the crystals off taps that usually cough out disease-ridden saltwater, but which that day were running dry.