A girl fills jugs and buckets with water in the courtyard of Mousab bin Omayer school in Tal Tamr, a town in north-east Syria. The school has been home to 224 refugees from the city of Ras al-Ayn on the Turkish border since October 2019, when Turkey launched an offensive into northern Syria. With no access to running water refugees have to buy supplies from trucks

The Khabur river was once the largest tributary of the Euphrates in Syria and one of the main water sources for the city of Hasakah (about 25 miles downstream from Tal Tamr). Today, the river is dry, a result of low rainfall and a dam across the border in Turkey

Trucks transport water from wells in the countryside east of Hasakah to the city. Here, they sell water to smaller trucks that deliver it to households around the city. In the background is a small station that was used to transfer water from Alouk water station near Ras al-Ayn to Khashman neighbourhood in Hasakah. But since the Turkish occupation of Alouk in October 2019, water has been repeatedly cut off

Ahmad Mahmoud Alahri, 62, and his brother have lost 6,000 of their 8,000 olive, lemon and fruit trees. Roughly half were destroyed by Islamic State militants, and half in the past year due to droughts. Although his land is just a few miles from Lake Assad, the largest reservoir in Syria, the level is now so low that the pumps that used to serve nearby villages and lands can no longer operate

Mohammed Abdo (right), 60, co-chair of the local commune, and his wife’s sister Berivan (an unemployed civil engineer). Their neighbourhood, Khashman, in the eastern outskirts of Hasakah, was one of the worst-hit by the water crisis that affected at nearly 460,000 people in north-east Syria in the summer. Since the disruption of supplies from Alouk water station in 2019, the family spend a quarter of their monthly budget on buying water from the trucks

Engineer Khaled Abdaljabr looks at an empty pool that used to purify water for Hasakah at al-Himma water station. When Alouk water station was occupied, the city decided to restore al-Himma, hoping it could be used to purify water from the Khabur. But a poor rainy season has dried up the river

The paediatric ward at Hasakah national hospital. Most children have been admitted due to water-related illnesses: diarrhoea, vomiting, and enteritis (inflammation of the small intestine). Between April and May, more than 1,359 people fell ill due to contaminated water in Hasakah province. Another 369 were diagnosed with acute diarrhoea. Between July and September, 575 patients were admitted, more than half of them children

Sara Omar Dawoud. a paediatric nurse at Hasakah national hospital. The children’s ward admits young patients daily, often with severe enteritis from contaminated water. Dawoud said she feels she is on the frontline of one of the worst crises, and sees no end to it

Ten-month-old Rashem with his mother. She came to the hospital after Rashem had diarrhoea for two days and stopped eating

Workers on the Tabqa dam, the construction of which created Lake Assad, replace pipes. Since September, levels at the reservoir have been so low that water stations that used to serve the surrounding villages can no longer operate

Tabqa control room. The Tabqa, Tishreen and Mansoura dams are the main source of power for about 3 million people in the region. Since January, low water levels have seen the electricity generated by the three dams drop dramatically. Most communities only have five to six hours of electricity a day

Workers at the end of their day shift at Tabqa dam, which employees 325 people. Much of the dam was destroyed during fighting

A sign inside the dam indicating the floor has been cleared of mines. The dam was controlled by IS until 2017

Women and their children on the shores of the Euphrates in Raqqa. The river used to be too dangerous to swim in at this point, but since January the flow from Turkey into Syria has been significantly less than normal, leading to critically low-water levels

The water level in this lake near Hasakah, which is normally fed by the Khabour, has become so low that local people have been able to catch fish with their hands

Abdo (centre) with local farmers. The drought-like conditions have severely affected farming. Water from makeshift wells is too salty and unsuitable for crops. ‘Not even IS dared to cut the water in such a way. Nobody is protecting us,’ said Abdo. ‘They are killing us slowly, this is not life. I would rather wish they would kill us with gas, as Saddam did in Halabja’

Ronaz Younes, co-chair of Tal Tamr municipality, in her office, under a picture of Abdullah Öcalan (also known as ‘Apo’) who co-founded the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) in 1978 and is currently in prison in Turkey. Tal Tamr is just a few miles from the frontline of the strip of land between Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn that Turkey occupied in October 2019

A man among the graves in Hasakah martyrs cemetery, where several fighters who died in the Turkish attack in October 2019 are buried

A woman and her child at sunset in the rural village of Dawdiyye, 6 miles north of Hasakah. More and more people who used to rely on agriculture are leaving the village. According to UN aid agency, Ocha, the disruption has affected direct access to water for approximately 460,000 people in north-east Syria. In total, up to 1 million people have been affected