Water Main Is Hit in Syria, Worsening Refugee Crisis
Clashes between the Syrian military and rebel fighters burst a main pipe that delivered drinking water to millions of residents of Aleppo, opposition groups said Saturday, as the United Nations refugee agency stepped up aid inside the country to more than 1.2 million people, half of them children, who it said had been displaced from their homes.
The United Nations refugee agency said the number of people in need of assistance inside the country had doubled since July to 2.5 million. That is in addition to the roughly 250,000 refugees who have fled to Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon, including 100,000 in August alone.
The sudden water shortage in Aleppo was the latest hardship in a particularly acute humanitarian crisis in Syria’s largest city, brought on by more than a month of street fighting and weeks of air attacks. A witness and two opposition groups that track the violence said Saturday that heavy shelling from Syrian helicopters appeared to have ruptured the water pipe; The Associated Press reported that a Syrian official blamed rebel sabotage.
The opposition groups, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordinating Committees, reported that water flooded into the neighborhoods of Al Midan and Bustan al-Basha in the city’s north. Activists distributed video images of brown water coursing over curbs and flooding basements as residents carrying children or weapons in their arms waded past.