British military forces reportedly have raided and taken control of the water treatment plant in Basra.
A Royal Marines unit took control of the badly damaged plant by force last night, capturing 11 Iraqi prisoners and a small cache of weapons.
They will bring in engineers to assess the damage and bring the plant back to full operation, in order to alleviate the growing humanitarian crisis in Iraq's second city.
Basra's water supply was cut last Friday. City authorities immediately started working to get clean water to Basra's residents, and by Monday pipelines were running at only 40 percent capacity.
Local workers have been trying to fix damaged electricity cables at the Wafaa Al-Quaid station. Meanwhile, they had set up generators to run the plant.
Source: MSNBC