{"id":15450,"date":"2018-09-18T00:24:06","date_gmt":"2018-09-18T00:24:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=15450"},"modified":"2018-09-18T00:24:06","modified_gmt":"2018-09-18T00:24:06","slug":"water-crisis-in-iraqs-basra-hospitalizes-football-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=15450","title":{"rendered":"Water crisis in Iraq\u2019s Basra hospitalizes football team"},"content":{"rendered":"<div data-io-article-url=\"http:\/\/www.arabnews.com\/node\/1373556\/middle-east\" readability=\"45\">\n<p>\nBASRA: A health crisis in the Iraqi city of Basra has claimed an unexpected victim \u2014 a top football club from Baghdad is 10 players down and unable to kick off the new season.<br \/>The Al-Hussein team traveled 600 kilometers (370 miles) south to play Naft Al-Junoob in the Iraqi Premier League, but players were hospitalized by polluted water.<br \/>The water crisis in oil-rich Basra province has put 60,000 people in hospital since mid-August, according to the provincial council for human rights.<br \/>The visiting club had taken precautions ahead of Monday\u2019s fixture, administrative manager Fadhel Zaghir told AFP \u2014 but to little avail.<br \/>\u201cWe brought a lot of mineral water with us from Baghdad but it seems the water used by the players to wash themselves and their clothes was polluted,\u201d he said.<br \/>\u201cWith 10 players and two members of the management team spending the night in hospital&#8230; (we negotiated) a postponement of the match with Naft Al-Junoob\u201d after agreement from the Iraq Football Association, he said.<br \/>No new date has been set for the fixture.<br \/>The Al-Hussein team remains in Basra, because the players are too unwell to travel back to Baghdad.<br \/>The pollution of Basra\u2019s water supply sparked an intensification of protests earlier this month against poor public services.<br \/>Twelve protesters were killed and several nights of violence saw public institutions and the Iranian consulate torched in Basra city.<br \/>The crisis has had major ramifications in Baghdad, undermining the power base of Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi.<br \/>Abadi said last week said he would not seek to head a new government, as negotiations over the next administration drag on, some four months after national elections.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BASRA: A health crisis in the Iraqi city of Basra has claimed an unexpected victim \u2014 a top football club from Baghdad is 10 players down and unable to kick off the new season.The Al-Hussein team traveled 600 kilometers (370 miles) south to play Naft Al-Junoob in the Iraqi Premier League, but players were hospitalized&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":15451,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15450\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}