Iraq drought displaces 1,200 families in parched south

NASIRIYAH, Iraq: 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 and Euphrates rivers due to dams built upstream in Turkey and Iran. Oil-rich Iraq, battered by decades of war, is also the world´s fifth-most vulnerable country to some key effects of climate change, including water scarcity and desertification, say the UN.