Black waters: Oil spills pollute northeast Syria creeks

Thousands of barrels have leaked out into creeks in the area over the past five years, threatening the health and livelihoods of people in dozens of villages, according to PAX and Samir Madani, co-founder of oil shipping website Tanker Trackers.

Compounding the situation, makeshift oil refineries have cropped up across the northeast in recent years, dumping oil waste in the waterways, PAX said.

These informal refineries receive oil from nearby fields and process it to provide benzine, gasoline and diesel to locals.

The oil contamination has tainted water supplies in a region also grappling with an outbreak of the novel coronavirus that has so far infected six people, one of whom died, according to data collated by the United Nations.

Sheep graze and drink from a stream polluted by an oil spill near the village of Sukayriyah.

Youths ride together on a donkey past a stream polluted by an oil spill near the village of Sukayriyah.

In the Kurdish-held northeast, a large storage facility in the Rmeilan oil field in Hasakeh province is of particular concern, with leaks from the Gir Zero storage facility have been suspected since at least 2014, and the latest just in March 2020.

US military vehicle pass by sheep grazing and drinking from a stream polluted by an oil spill in the countryside south of Rumaylan (Rmeilan) in Syria's Kurdish-controlled northeastern Hasakeh province

A horse grazes and drinks from a stream polluted by an oil spill near the village of Sukayriyah.

A man drives a motorcycle past a makeshift refinery using burners to distill crude oil in the village of Bishiriya.