The Mosul dam is slowly sinking, sparking fears that 7million lives are at risk if it breaks.
Even if just 26 per cent of the dam collapsed there would be floods on a catastrophic scale with the equivalent of 4,400 Olympic-sized swimming pools gushing down stream.
It would hit Mosul at 82ft high 100 minutes after breaching the wall and then three and a half days later it would destroy Baghdad with a 26ft wave.
Cities, towns, villages and farmland along 434 miles of the River Tigris would be flooded, according to the European Commission’s Science Centre.
The dam is 37 miles away from Mosul where Iraqi forces are currently battling with Isis.
It has been put under the protection of Italian soldiers and Kurish troops for the last 18 months while engineers have been working on saving the dam.
The £238 million repairs have been funded by the World Bank and is being carried out by Italian company, TREVI.
But scientists have warned that the repairs are only temporary and people should already be preparing to evacuate the area.
‘It is just a matter of time. It will be worse than throwing a nuclear bomb on Iraq,’ a professor at Lulea University in Sweden, Nadhir al-Ansari, told Al Jazeera .
‘No matter how much grouting and maintenance the company will do, it may expand the life span of the dam, but it is just going to delay the disaster,’ he added.
Ansari said there are hundreds of sinkholes at the bottom of the reservoir, just north of the dam – and some are as large as 20 metres.
A study by the European Commission’s Science Centre, said if just 26% of the dam collapses it would cause a flood of ‘catastrophic proportions’.
And it could destroy the infrastructure of all the cities along the Tigris banks, including Tikrit.
A panel of experts met in Rome and looked at two options: continue with temporary repairs, or build an entirely new dam.
A final decision is yet to be made.
Formerly known as ‘Saddam Dam’, it started construction in 1981 but began to erode upon the filling of the reservoir back in 1985.
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