Hammar, Lake

Hammar, Lake

 Arabic Hawr al-Hammar

Large swampy lake, southeastern Iraq. Lying south of the junction of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and fed by distributaries of the Euphrates, the lake is some 750 sq mi (2,000 sq km) in area; it drains through a short channel into the Shatt al-Arab near Al-Basrah. It was once a reed-filled marshland but was later used for irrigating the delta region. Home to the Madan, or Marsh Arabs, a tribe of seminomadic marsh dwellers, it was partially drained in 1992 by the Iraqi government in an attempt to drive out Shi'ite guerrillas who had taken refuge there. By 1993 one-third of the lake was dry, and thousands of its residents had fled deeper into the marshes or to Iran.