Syria's longest river used to flow by his olive grove, but today Khaled al-Khamees says it has receded into the distance, parching his trees and leaving his family with hardly a drop to drink.
"It's as if we were in the desert," said the 50-year-old farmer, standing on what last year was the Euphrates riverbed.
"We're thinking of leaving because there's no water left to drink or irrigate the trees."
Aid groups and engineers are warning of a looming humanitarian disaster in northeast Syria, where waning river flow is compounding woes after a decade of war.
They say plummeting water levels at hydroelectric dams since January are threatening water and power cutoffs for up to five million Syrians, in the middle of a coronavirus pandemic and economic crisis.
As drought grips the Mediterranean region, many in the Kurdish-held area are accusing neighbour and archfoe Turkey of weaponising water by tightening the tap upstream, though a Turkish source denied this.....AFP
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