president has been arrested. the president has been arrested. the president stepped down after weeks of massive street protests. nelle bbc news with toxic water in the southern iraqi city that cost thousands of people to call fall sick we investigate. last summer, a city fell sick. the streets of basra erupted in anger. the cause? the city's water supply. a toxic cocktail that is poisoning the people. this is cancer. if we don't fix this, this cancer will spread. we are on a journey from the mountains of northern iraq to the southern marshes to investigate the country's environmental catastrophe and understand how the city of basra has become the country's drain, the centre of the crisis, where all the filth ends up. a little over 15 years ago, none of this existed. the marshes had been drained but in 2003, they were brought back to life. the threats now are very different — they're pollution, a lack of water as well as climate change. if people keep dumping raw sewerage, poisons, toxins... of course, of course, it is catastrophic. 0urjourney to trace the roots of this crisis begins in the mountains of northern iraq, a lunar landscape that brings to life the rest of the country. the rainfall from here feeds iraq's two great rivers, the tigris and the euphrates. they gave rise to mesopotamia, the land between the rivers, home to one of the earliest civilisations, now modern—day iraq. the water up here is at its most pristine. untouched, you can drink it straight from the streams. but almost as soon as it runs off the mountains, it becomes contaminated. this is the rubbish dump for sulaymaniyah, one of the biggest cities in northern iraq, and everything gets dumped here. this is just one of the most extraordinary things i've ever seen. it's a mountain of rubbish and it looks like part of the landscape, and that's the point. all of this is leaching into the river. the problem may start here but the consequences of it are really being felt downstream. our guide, nabil, grew up here. he worked as a forklift driver overseas but the beauty of iraq brought him home. now he's an environmental activist, dedicated to cleaning up the country's waterways and he says iraqis need to wake up to the nightmare they've created. this is cancer. if we don't solve, if we don't fix this, this cancer will spread, obviously. you can see this is sliding down and going into our life, which is our drinking water, so it's going to affect our food, our children, our fish and creatures, insects, bugs, everything, so the cancer will spread so we need to kill this cancer, yes. if i was to fall into that, would i survive? no. you will be lucky if you survive. this is the deadliest liquid, this is pure litter and we've been dumping oils for the last 10 years, and of course, the garbage going to the oils plus the litter, sulphur, asphalt, heavy metals, everything in this. pure poison. yes, this is pure contamination and it's pure poison. but it's notjust the quality of iraq's water, it's the quantity as too. dozens of dams have been built across the region. iraq depends on its neighbours for 70% of its supply, but now only gets half the water it once did. the dukan lake, a massive reservoir, contains iraq's most precious resource, but in a breathtaking boat ride, nabil shows me how it's being squandered. what's this place called? "tang—i bukozawa." "bride and groom's gorge." this is very famous place. people they come here just for visit selfie, and they go back. this is a selfie spot, because it's so beautiful? yes. but then you see this. itjust makes it very sad. sulaymaniyah, this is what we drink, this is our drinking water. it takes us 10 minutes and people don't see this place, they think we have the dukan lake reservoir, it's beautiful, clean, but wait a minute, if you go deep to the dead end, this is a dead end, you will see the reality. well, we are finally free from the sludge. not 100%. we have some more... there is more up ahead, sadly. the beating heart of the country is the capital, baghdad. it's the next stop on ourjourney. for almost a0 years, iraqi has been consumed by war. it's the only thing it's planned for. but baghdad is rapidly growing. its population is expected to swell to 10 million people. this is just lovely, wandering through one of the most famous streets in baghdad and to think, a decade ago, this would have simply been unimaginable. the security situation was so out of control, but it's a sign, i suppose of, how much this country has changed since then. the city's infrastructure was built decades ago and it can no longer cope. so baghdad dumps all of its raw sewerage into the river, flushing the problem downstream. but nature is no longer so forgiving. how high did this river used to be? is the level the same as it was in the past? no, no, it's not the same level. you can see the edge over there. it used to be that high. so it would be covering those reeds way above us? yes, yes, exactly. and now there's just less water. yes, much less. and it never gets that high again. what does this river mean to you? i think this river is the main source of life because, you know, civilisations started in here, one of the biggest civilisations of humans started here, so this is something meaningfulfor me. it's very precious. it's precious. well, this is the historic city of baghdad, home to more than 8 million people. and the lifeblood of this city is the tigris river. but as you move down it, the more polluted the tigris becomes. it's almost as if iraq is poisoning itself. it's nearly 500km from baghdad to the city of basra. it's home to the country's main port and once fertile farmland. but now, it's hard to find fresh water here. and the rising salinity of the water is having a crippling effect on the city. this was basra last summer when the city erupted in anger. protesters were furious about corruption, unemployment and poisoned water. gunfire the authorities cracked down hard. more than a dozen demonstrators were killed. basra was a broken city. this one—day protester cursed the city's leaders as the scum of the earth. a city once known as the venice of the east had become a vision of hell. its canals, a symbol of corruption and dysfunction. the sweltering summer heat, turning this into a toxic stew. tens of thousands were rushed to the city's hospital, suffering from stomach cramps and serious diarrhoea. doctors and nurses were overwhelmed. the city had never seen a health crisis on this scale. it was basra's slums that were worse hit. people here live in toxic filth, and have limited access to clean drinking water. i meet rima, a housewife. she shows me the family's water source. rima's ten children all fell sick. several of them spent two weeks in hospitals. was the whole neighbourhood sick? basra should be a wealthy city. it sits on top of most of iraq's oil. it is also where country's two great rivers converge. this is the shatt al—arab and the big problem last summer is there simply wasn't enough water coming down the river, and that is incredibly important to flush this system because what you have is the river fighting the sea. the sea is pushing up in the opposite direction and it faces resistance from the river. well, last summer, it was the sea that won the battle, and the water became incredibly salty and that is a real problem because this is the main water source for the city of basra. and if that was not bad enough, basra dumps all its raw sewerage into the river. it was sitting here, stagnating in the summer heat. i went to meetjamal al—adili who has responsibility for the country's water resources. we have made a lot of tests — a lot of tests. there are some traces of heavy metals which should not be in the water but i do not think it is the cause, the real cause. it is the mixture of sewerage water in the shatt al—arab, and sea water and the scarcity of pure water, all this together which make this water not suitable for human consumption. if people keep dumping raw sewerage, poisons, toxins... of course, it is catastrophic. the augmentation and the increase of population, of course, the increase of use of water and the increase of sewerage, this will destroy everything. it will destroy everything? of course, of course, it will destroy the quality of water they need to drink and to supply everything they need. the government says it is investing in water treatment projects to prevent a repeat of last summer's crisis, but iraq can't do it on its own, and that's because most of its water comes from neighbouring countries, including iran. what's really interesting is we've been meeting a lot of officials and they have been incredibly open and informative, but as soon as we mention the word "iran" they suddenly clam up, they don't want to go there, they don't want to talk about that issue, and i think that's a sign of how much iranian influence there is in the city, but several of those officials told us that iran is the source of some of the pollution that goes into this river behind me. last summer was a glimpse of how a state can shatter when it fails to provide even the most basic of services. the governor's office in basra were set on fire by protesters. this is a city plagued by corruption and shia militias. one of the protest leaders says that is killing basra. what do you want from the government? iraq sits on fabulous wealth but basra has not seen any of it and nor have the arab marshes, a world heritage site larger than many arab countries. and we're off, we're just leaving the main town in the marshes and we're heading out into the central waters. i'm excited. i'm very, very excited. it's a place of shimmering beauty that stretches for as far as the eye can see. the miracle in the desert, only made possible by the country's two great rivers which flood this plane. it is little wonder then that some believe this was the original garden of eden. this road was built in the 1990s by saddam hussein when there was an uprising in the marshes and he crushed that rebellion and, in order to punish the people here, he drained all of the marshes. the people may have returned but life remains tough here. families depend upon the marshes but there have been three droughts in a decade. and last year, the wetlands shrunk to a quarter of their original size. there simply wasn't enough fresh water. and for the buffalo, that was a killer. and if they can't survive then neither can the community. these animals provide milk, meat and money. karim al—bahar has been rearing buffalo all his life but last summer he lost 20 of his animals. without water, what is the future here? is there a future? life is fragile here and what happens to these wetlands will have consequences for the rest of iraqi. jassim has dedicated his life to the marshes, he's the guardian of these waters. a little over 15 years ago, none of this existed, the marshes had been drained but in 2003 they were brought back to life. the threats now are very different — the pollution, a lack of water as well as climate change. the marshes have survived for millennia but they may not last much longer. like iraq itself, they are facing their gravest threat yet. last summer was a warning to the country that the rivers that created these extraordinary wetlands are under assault. and unless iraq gets to grips with its water crisis, millions could be forced to move and away of life could be wiped out forever. for many of us the bank holiday weekend got off to a decent looking start with some sunshine. in fact a beautiful day here on the north coast of northern ireland, but has not felt so special and colder plunging down from the north and also showers. this is the radar picture from saturday and you can see the way in which those showers worked across eastern parts of england, some heavy and fun to read. winter showers through the day across scotland. for sunday high pressure is making a bit more progress building in from the west. that will kill off quite a few of the showers are not quite all of them but this weather set up will bring us a feed of cold air from the north. having said that the winds won't be as brisk across eastern parts of england so where it has been feeling very raw for those north sea coasts it will feel better on sunday. northern ireland what are two showers with predominantly dry spells. a priest of rain in the far north and highs of 13 degrees. painstakingly slow progress south and out of scotland into northern england and ireland. the patchy rain will be such a cold night and certainly a touch of frost across scotland. during my date, bank holiday monday this shower he ran continues to work very slowly south and ahead of its patchy cloud and sunny spells and behind it makes a sunny spells and behind it makes a sunny spells and a chilly day. 9 degrees. that band of cloud and patchy rain is marked out by this frontal system here. on tuesday very slack in the winds will be very light and we have the old weather front flying around across central parts of the uk we are likely to break out some showers. better chance of staying dry across the south and far north. and quite a chilly day for the time of year. the weather steps up as we move out of tuesday into wednesday and the jet strea m tuesday into wednesday and the jet stream picking up a weather system deepening at an area of low pressure likely to run some are close to the south of the british isles bringing some wind and rain with the jet strea m some wind and rain with the jet stream so far south and keeps us in some relatively chilly air. we are likely to see these outbreaks grazing into southern and perhaps some central parts of the uk and what weather for the channel islands. it will be quite windy and blustery winds elsewhere i show you the temperatures they certainly have not improved very much. 13 or 1a in the south. for thursday that area of low pressure will slide away eastwards and signs are that things might start to dry up a little bit in the west and showers around and still not especially warm. make it london or more like nine. as we head towards next weekend initially in the chilly air there are increasing signs that the jet stream will start to banded north and that will allow us to banded north and that will allow us to bring something a little bit warmer in our direction. not talking a heat wave, temperatures returning to average but will feel less chilly and high pressure for a time is likely to take charge. should be more drive for a time with later wins and slowly turned warmer. might have weather that looks pleasant and also feels a bit more pleasant as well. this is bbc news, i'm geeta guru—murthy. the headlines at 10: former conservative party leader, iain duncan smith, says the prime minister must go now or be forced out — after the party suffers heavy losses in the english local elections. former defence secretary gavin williamson claims he's a victim of a "witch hunt" after police say they won't be investigating a leak from the national security council about the tech giant huawei. officials in gaza say a mother and a baby are among four people killed in israeli air strikes. israel says they retaliated after palestinian militants fired at least 200 rockets into israel. and it's victory for manchester city in the women's fa cup final, as they defeat west ham 3—0 at wembley.

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