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| Source: RT.com |
Reports indicate that Kurdish and
Iraqi forces have all but taken back the key Mosul Dam from Islamic State
militants. However it is rigged with explosives which, together with other
issues, could lead to hundreds of thousands killed in just days.
Two major problems are the
deliberate setting of booby traps by the militants, who took the dam in early
August, and the already extremely dangerous, under-maintained state of the
Tigris River dam itself.
The dam, the largest in Iraq, could
be used as “a weapon of mass destruction,” experts have warned, alluding
to its capacity to hold back 11-12 billion cubic meters of water, as well as to
produce 1,000 megawatts of electricity.
In essence, the dam can either
deprive half a million people of energy and water, or simply drown them.
A
2006 US Army Corps of Engineers report obtained by the Washington Post said the
dam, which blocks the Tigris, could wipe out whole cities, and was considered
to be "the most dangerous dam in the world."
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