It was the river that is said to have watered the biblical Garden of Eden and helped give birth to civilisation itself.
But today the Tigris is dying.
Human activity and climate change have choked its once mighty flow through Iraq, where -- with its twin river the Euphrates -- it made Mesopotamia a cradle of civilisation thousands of years ago.
Battered by one natural disaster after another, it is one of the five countries most exposed to climate change, according to the UN.
From April on, temperatures exceed 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) and intense sandstorms often turn the sky orange, covering the country in a film of dust.
The Tigris, the lifeline connecting the storied cities of Mosul, Baghdad and Basra, has been choked by dams, most of them upstream in Turkey, and falling rainfall.
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© Agence France-Presse
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