Millions Without Water in West Baghdad After ISIS Attack

ISIS hit key electricity pylon near pumping station

Millions of people living in western Baghdad are without running water Sunday after a Saturday ISIS attack on an electricity pylon in the north. The pylon was running an important pumping station.

Attacks on Iraq’s electricity system have been common this summer, with a lot of important pylons being destroyed. Usually such attacks are blamed on unspecified militants, though in this case they are attributing it directly to ISIS.

Power shortages and common, and intermittent water cuts mean many Baghdad residents have water tanks to cover brief outages. This looks to be a longer outage, and locals are advised to ration their supplies.

Iraq produces far less electricity than it uses, particularly in a hot summer. Even then, the electricity sector is heavily dependent on imports of gas from neighboring Iran, and Iraq is running a deep debt on that account which they are mostly not paying for.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is senior editor of