Water levels at Iraq's vast Dukan Dam reservoir have plummeted as a result of dwindling rains and further damming upstream, hitting millions of inhabitants already impacted by drought with stricter water rationing.

Amid these conditions, visible cracks have emerged in the retreating shoreline of the artificial lake, which lies in northern Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region and was created in the 1950s.

Dukan Lake has been left three quarters empty, with its director Kochar Jamal Tawfeeq explaining its reserves currently stand at around 1.6 billion cubic metres of water out of a possible seven billion.

That is "about 24 percent" of its capacity, the official said, adding that the level of water in the lake had not been so low in roughly 20 years.

Satellite imagery analysed by AFP shows the lake's surface area shrank by 56 percent between the end of May 2019, the last year it was completely full, and the beginning of June 2025.

Tawfeeq blamed........

© Al Monitor