A mother and her two children died in the collapse of the roof of their house in Iraq after a night of heavy rain, civil defense announced Thursday, in a country with failing infrastructure.
Aged 26, the young mother and her two children aged four and two perished when the “roof of their earthen house collapsed” in a small village in the Kirkuk region (north), indicated to the AFP the head of the local civil defense, Fadel Mohamed, specifying that “the tragedy occurred because of the heavy rains”.
Iraq has been in a situation of drought for three consecutive years, and rare torrential rains, beneficial for the rivers and the water reserves of the dams, are welcomed with relief by the farmers.
But they also cause longer power cuts than usual, and cause flooding in cities with failing infrastructure.
Thus, due to rainfall, the province of Diyala (center) gave a public holiday to officials and that of Salaheddine (north) announced the closure of schools, according to statements from their governors.
Minister for Migration and Displaced Persons Evan Gabro called on her teams to provide “support and assistance to displaced families in the camps” whose tents were reportedly damaged due to rain, according to a statement.
Very rich in hydrocarbons, Iraq is one of the five countries in the world most vulnerable to certain consequences of climate change, according to the UN.
Nearly a third of its 42 million people live in poverty and its rural communities are on the front lines of climate change and water shortages that impact livestock and crops.
At the end of February, the two major rivers that cross Iraq, the Tigris and the Euphrates, experienced, according to the authorities, a sharp drop in their water level in the south of the country.
The government attributes this phenomenon to falling rainfall but above all to the dams built upstream of the two rivers and which retain water in neighboring Turkey and Iran.