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FOUND: Euphrates - What They Never Told You

A legendary river that shaped ancient empires and civilizations may have just revealed its past

Euphrates River origin: Contrary to popular belief, the mighty Euphrates River wasn't always a single entity. New research reveals it began as two colossal ancient waterways, Paleo-Karasu and Paleo-Murat, flowing separately into the Mediterranean Sea around 5.5 million years ago.

The Economic Times

Scientists reveal the origin of the Euphrates — a river that fed the 'cradle of civilization'

The Euphrates River fueled the "cradle of civilization," and a new study reveals the waterway was born of two other ancient rivers around 3.6 million years ago.

LiveScience

Authorities urge Euphrates riverbank residents in Syria to move inland as waters rise

Water levels of the Euphrates River in northern and eastern Syria have risen, causing flooding over the past two days

The Independent UK

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Syrian government seizes strategic town in Raqqa from Kurdish forces in an ongoing push eastward

Government forces have seized a strategic town in eastern Syria, intensifying their push against Kurdish-led forces east of the Euphrates River

The Independent UK

Water Salinity Hurting Farmers, Livestock In Iraq

Iraqi farmer Umm Ali has watched her poultry die as salinity levels in the country's south hit record highs, rendering already scarce water unfit for human consumption and killing livestock.

International Business Times

Massive Mesopotamian canal network unearthed in Iraq

Researchers have identified an extensive Mesopotamian canal network that supplied ancient farms in the Eridu region with water from the Euphrates river before the first millennium B.C.

LiveScience

Vast network of canals found underneath world’s first city

Archaeologists find nearly 200 primary canals and 4,000 smaller branches feeding over 700 farms

The Independent UK

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In Iraq's Summer, Residents Of Kurdistan's Arbil Ache For Water

The taps have run dry, and the wells are almost empty. - Dried wells - Iraq is known in Arabic as the Land of the Two Rivers, referring to the once mighty Tigris and Euphrates.

International Business Times

Turkish president visits Iraq to bolster economic ties

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was in Iraq this Monday on his first official visit in over a decade. Erdogan signed a raft of deals in a bid to reset rocky relations. High on the agenda was the water issue, stemming from Turkey's construction of dams on the Tigris and…

France 24

Rampant Water Pollution Threatens Iraq's Shrinking Rivers

Stricken by drought and depleted by upstream dams, Iraq's once mighty rivers the Tigris and Euphrates are suffocating under pollutants from sewage to medical waste.

International Business Times

Iraq's polluted rivers threaten daily life, pose serious health risks

Over the past few months, temperatures in Iraq have reached 50 degrees Celsius and water levels in the country’s rivers are dropping fast. Despite having two big rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, Iraq suffers from desertification and there are concerns about the water disappearing - mainly from Iranian and Turkish…

France 24

‘How would you survive?’: Desperation grows in Iraq water crisis

Parched communities, once displaced by the ravages of ISIL, can barely survive the decimation of their water supplies.

Al Jazeera

Commentary: Finding a new path to water conservation for the next millennium, for California and the world

In the long sweep of human history, water has always played a central role in determining the geography of civilizations, and eons ago it influenced the migration of our early ancestors out of Africa and across the world. The ability to manage water contributed to the success or failure of…

Los Angeles Times

In Iraq

A hundred years ago, the Euphrates burst for several miles the bund forty miles Northwest of Baghdad and inundated fortyfive thousand acres of cultivated land with crops

The Hindu

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Asharq Al-Awsat

Iraq: Levels of Tigris and Euphrates Plunge in South

Iraq's Tigris and Euphrates rivers have witnessed a sharp decrease in their levels in the south of the country, officials said Sunday, pledging to take urgent measures to ease water shortages. In Nasiriyah, capital of the southern province of Dhi Qar, an AFP photographer saw the river bed of the…

The Guardian - UK

Death in the marshes: environmental calamity hits Iraq’s unique wetlands

Rivers and lakes that have nurtured communities since civilisation’s dawn are drying up, as drought leads to hunger, displacement and simmering conflict

Asharq Al-Awsat

Syria, Türkiye Normalization Takes Shape along Aleppo-Latakia Highway

Open and secret political and security contacts have expanded in recent days to choose the best path to normalize relations with Damascus. Syria and Türkiye have held security meetings in the Latakia countryside with the aim of reopening the Aleppo-Latakia highway. A Kurdish delegation from Qamishli even visited the Syrian…

The Independent UK

Climate, politics double threat as Tigris-Euphrates shrivels

A combination of climate change and politics is threatening the Tigris-Euphrates river system, one of the world's most vulnerable watersheds

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The Independent UK

Politics, climate conspire as Tigris and Euphrates dwindle

A combination of climate change and politics is threatening the Tigris-Euphrates river system, one of the world’s most vulnerable watersheds

Reuters

Middle East's Fertile Crescent dries up as rains fail

Abbas Elwan drilled well after well in a desperate bid to find water for his family's parched farmlands in southern Iraq. After yet another attempt failed in August, he took a gun from the kitchen of their mud house and slipped into the night.

Asharq Al-Awsat

The Syrian Oil: Time for New Approach?

With the war in Syria now in its twelfth year and with the US-Russian conflict still ongoing to control the oil sector and its potential, local belligerents and regional opponents have found in oil a rare point of consensus to cooperate and pick clean the country’s wealth and revenues. Oil…

Asharq Al-Awsat

Syria Cholera Outbreak Worsened by Regime, Türkiye, Says HRW

Human Rights Watch Monday accused the government in Damascus and Türkiye of exacerbating Syria's deadly cholera outbreak by restricting aid and water-flow to the country's Kurdish-held northeast. Syria has recorded 81 deaths and more than 24,000 suspected cases of the extremely virulent disease since September, according to the World Health…

Asharq Al-Awsat

Iraqi Wells Threaten Race to the Bottom

Iraq has long drilled the desert for oil, but now climate stress, drought and reduced river flows are forcing it to dig ever deeper for a more precious resource: water. Iraq is one of the world's five countries most impacted by key effects of the climate crisis, according the United…

Asharq Al-Awsat

Iraq Drought Displaces 1,200 Families in Parched South

Some 1,200 Iraqi families have been forced out of southern marshes and farmlands over the past six months, a local official told AFP, as drought ravages swathes of the country. The Mesopotamian Marshes, a UNESCO World Heritage site, have been battered by low rainfall and reduced flows in the Tigris…

Asharq Al-Awsat

Iraq's Mighty River Drying Up

It was the river that is said to have watered the biblical Garden of Eden and helped give birth to civilization itself. But today the Tigris is dying. Human activity and climate change have choked its once mighty flow through Iraq, where -- with its twin river the Euphrates --…

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