Mosul diaries: Poisoned by water

In a series of diary entries, Mosul residents describe life under IS. Their names have been changed to protect their identities.

19 December 2014

From Mays

With the mobile phone network still out of action, it was with extreme difficulty that my sister let me know that she was extremely sick.

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This has become another chore to add to the list”

I rushed to her house on the other side of one of the city's bridges. Peering at the Euphrates, I said to my husband: "Even this river is unclear! When will our situation clear up so that our water clears again?"

Eventually we reached my sister's house, but she was in extreme pain. We rushed her to the city's hospital, which was extremely overcrowded, with people with similar symptoms.

As soon as we inquired, we were told there was an outbreak of poisoning across the city. The only common factor was the water.

'Harder and harder'

It turned out my sister was suffering from water poisoning, mainly from the water that is pumped into the city from the eastern and western pumping stations.

With water purifiers scarce, the stations had been pumping water into the houses through the pipes, without purification or filtration.

I saw one of our relatives in the hospital - they were also suffering from water poisoning. It dawned on me that the state of the water in the Euphrates that I saw crossing that bridge was the same as when it reached our homes.

This was all followed by a sharp rise in the price of bottled water. One of two water bottling factories in the city is closed due to the owner's absence, and the other is working with limited capacity - plus roads to Kurdistan, where you can buy bottled water, are all blocked.

As we returned home I was agitated thinking about my sister and the whole situation. I know that IS does not care whether our water is filtered or not, so I found myself trying to filter our own water at home mainly by boiling it.

This has become another chore to add to the list, as life under the Islamic State becomes harder and harder.

(BBC)