"The dam, on the Tigris River about 30 miles northwest of Mosul, provides electricity to Mosul and controls the water supply for a large area. A report published in 2007 by the United States government, which had been involved with work on the dam and spent nearly $30 million on repairs, warned that should it fail, a 65-foot wave of water would be unleashed across areas of northern Iraq. Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the former special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, who oversaw the 2007 report on the dam, said ISIS could certainly use the dam as a weapon of war, but that it could also use it as a means of finance, by extorting money in exchange for water or electricity. ISIS has already used Iraq’s water supply as a weapon. Earlier this year it seized control of the Falluja Dam, in Anbar Province, and flooded a vast area that sent thousands of refugees fleeing, submerged hundreds of homes and several schools and interrupted the water supply to southern Iraq."
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