IS reduces water supply to government areas in Anbar

BAGHDAD -- Islamic State militants have reduced the amount of water flowing to government-held areas in Iraq's western Anbar province, officials said Thursday, a move that highlights the use of water as a weapon of war and puts more pressure on Iraqi forces struggling to claw back ground held by the extremists in the Sunni heartland.

The development is not the first time water has been used as a weapon in Mideast conflicts and in Iraq in particular.

Earlier this year, the Islamic State group reduced the flow through a lock outside the militant-held town of Fallujah, also in Anbar province. But the extremists soon reopened it after criticism from residents.

Last summer, IS militants took control of the Mosul Dam -- the largest in Iraq -- and threatened to flood Baghdad and other major cities, but Iraqi and Kurdish forces, backed by U.S. airstrikes, later recaptured the facility.

The battle for the dam followed the Islamic State's blitz across much of western and northern Iraq earlier last year, an advance that captured key Anbar cities and Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city that lies to the north of Baghdad.

The Islamic State group also gained large swaths of land in neighboring Syria and proclaimed a self-styled caliphate on the territory it controls, imposing its harsh interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia.