{"id":177136,"date":"2015-08-31T17:19:13","date_gmt":"2015-08-31T17:19:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=177136"},"modified":"2015-08-31T17:19:13","modified_gmt":"2015-08-31T17:19:13","slug":"deliberate-targeting-water-sources-worsens-misery-millions-syrians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/deliberate-targeting-water-sources-worsens-misery-millions-syrians\/","title":{"rendered":"Deliberate Targeting of Water Sources Worsens Misery for Millions of Syrians"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><span class=\"meta_origin\">United Nations <\/span>&#8211; Imagine having to venture out into a conflict zone in search of water because rebel groups and government forces have targeted the pipelines. Imagine walking miles in the blazing summer heat, then waiting hours at a public tap to fill up your containers. Now imagine realizing the jugs are too heavy to carry back home.<\/p>\n<p>This scene, witnessed by an engineer with the United Nations Children&#8217;s Fund (UNICEF), is becoming all too common in embattled Syria. In this case, the child sent to fetch water was a little girl who simply sat down and cried when it became clear she wouldn&#8217;t be able to get the precious resource back to her family.<\/p>\n<p>Compounded by a blistering heat wave, with temperatures touching a searing 40 degrees Celsius in the northern city of Aleppo, Syria&#8217;s water shortage is reaching critical levels, the United Nations said Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>In an Aug. 26 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.unicef.org\/media\/media_82980.html\">press relief<\/a>, UNICEF blasted parties to the conflict for deliberately targeting the water supply, adding that it has recorded 18 intentional water cuts in Aleppo in 2015 alone.<\/p>\n<p>Such a move &#8211; banned under international law &#8211; is worsening the misery of millions of war-weary civilians, with an estimated five million people enduring the impacts of long interruptions to their water supply in the past few months.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Clean water is both a basic need and a fundamental right, in Syria as it is anywhere else,&#8221; Peter Salama, UNICEF&#8217;s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement today. &#8220;Denying civilians access to water is a flagrant violation of the laws of war and must end.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.truth-out.org\/news\/item\/32576-deliberate-targeting-of-water-sources-worsens-misery-for-millions-of-syrians\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>United Nations &#8211; Imagine having to venture out into a conflict zone in search of water because rebel groups and government forces have targeted the pipelines. Imagine walking miles in the blazing summer heat, then waiting hours at a public tap to fill up your containers. Now imagine realizing the jugs are too heavy to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":177137,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-177136","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}