People of Damascus demand international pressure on terrorists over continued water cutoff

Damascus, SANA – A crowd of people gathered outside the People’s Assembly on Thursday denouncing the continued cutoff of water supply to Damascus by the terrorist organizations.

The water cutoff in Wadi Barada area, which has been going on for more than a month, has caused suffering to over five millions of the residents of Damascus, depriving them of drinking water.

A number of MPs and officials and workers from the Ministry of Water Resources and the General Establishment of Drinking Water and Sewerage of Damascus and its Countryside took part in the sit-in, which is aimed at exerting pressure on the international community and the countries funding and supporting terrorism to stop this crime committed by the terrorist groups and force them into supplying water back to Damascus residents.

“Cutting off water supply to Damascus and its suburbs is a war crime,” a number of the participants in the sit-in said in their statements to SANA reporter.

They carried banners with slogans condemning the international community’s silence on such a horrible crime and pleading that the children and all people of Syria have the right to enjoy drinking water.

Member of the People’s Assembly Nidal Hmeidi dismissed cutting off water supply to a whole capital and a population of more than five millions as an “international organized terrorism.”

Deputy Minister of Water Resources described the water cutoff as a “cowardly act of terror” that has been unprecedented in history, calling on the countries supporting terrorism to realize the gravity of this crime.

Assistant Director of the General Establishment of Drinking Water and Sewerage of Damascus and Its Countryside Eng. Issam al-Tabbaa said the Establishment’s cadres and teams have been working around the clock for more than a month now to supply Damascus city with water from alternative sources.

The participants in the sit-in handed a letter of protest to Speaker of the People’s Assembly Hadiyeh Abbas demanding that the Assembly could help in delivering it to international parliaments and the international community to let their voice heard so that the water cutoff crime could be stopped.

Abbas stressed that the People’s Assembly demands that all world parliaments, human rights organizations and the UN work to pressure the countries and governments supporting the terrorists so that they stop emboldening them and encouraging them to commit more appalling crimes.

A similar letter was also handed to the UN Resident Representative in Syria, with the protesters warning that if the cutoff of the water supply continues, a “real human catastrophe” might emerge.

H. Said