Disaster looms in Syria as Euphrates dwindles

Experts warn of impending humanitarian ‘catastrophe’ in northeast Syria, where waning river flow is rapidly waning.

Syria’s longest river used to flow by his olive grove, but Khaled al-Khamees says it has now receded into the distance, parching his trees and leaving his family with hardly a drop to drink. “It’s as if we were in the desert,” said the 50-year-old farmer, standing on what last year was the Euphrates riverbed. “We’re thinking of leaving because there’s no water left to drink or irrigate the trees.”