Iran says water restored to 20,000 after ‘war crime’ US strikes hit reservoirs

TEHRAN, June 11 — Water supply to villages in southern Iran have been restored after US strikes hit reservoirs, state television reported on Thursday, in what Iranian officials described as a “war crime.”

Water and desalination facilities, particularly in southern Iran and across its Gulf neighbours, have been among the most critical and vulnerable infrastructure targets since the outbreak of the war between Iran, Israel and the United States on February 28.

An exchange of fire that took place overnight into Wednesday morning — despite a ceasefire that went into effect on April 8 — saw US strikes hit two water reservoirs in the town of Sirik, cutting off nearly 20,000 people from access to drinking water.

“The water distribution network of the affected areas has been restored,” said Abdolhamid Hamzehpour, general manager of the Hormozgan Water and Wastewater Company, according to state television on Thursday.

He said the repair process took “less than 12 hours” and “the intermittent supply problems for subscribers in the city of Kouhestak and the villages of the Bemani district were fully resolved”.

Washington had said the strikes were carried out in response to Iran’s downing of a US Army Apache helicopter over Gulf waters.

Tehran dismissed the justification as a “false pretext” and responded with missile and drone attacks targeting US bases in Bahrain, Jordan and Kuwait.

The strikes on the reservoirs prompted Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei on Wednesday to describe the attack as “a calculated war crime and flagrant violation of human rights”.

“The US must be held accountable for committing such systematic brutal attacks on civilian life-sustaining infrastructure,” he said in a post on X.

The head of Hormozgan province’s judiciary, Mojtaba Ghahremani, was also quoted by state television as saying the attack “constituted a war crime”.

On March 7, at the height of the war, Iran said US strikes hit a desalination plant on Qeshm Island near the Strait of Hormuz.

The following day, Bahrain reported an Iranian strike on a water facility, in what appeared to be retaliation for the US attack on Qeshm. — AFP