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Iran’s government hopes to save Lake Urmia for both wildlife and recreation, including therapeutic baths in its very salty waters. HOSSEIN FATEMI/PANOS PICTURES/REDUX
After revival, Iran’s great salt lake faces new peril
Apr. 29, 2021 , 3:10 PM
Twenty years ago, geochemist Arash Sharifi began to drill sediment cores in Iran’s Lake Urmia then the largest lake in the Middle East to probe its recent climate history. “I was shocked at how little was known about the lake,” recalls Sharifi, now at Beta Analytic Inc. in Miami. He became entranced by the “very unique chemistry” of its hypersaline waters. He also grew alarmed: Dams on feeder rivers and a proliferation of illegal wells had made the lake, a favorite haunt of flamingos and migratory birds, “vulnerable to hydrological collapse,” he wrote in an internal government report.
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Moroccan men fish on the Moroccan side of the border with Spain, as seen from the district of Benzu in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, Thursday, June 3, 2021. (AP Photo / Bernat Armangue)
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Palestinians pass by the destroyed Al-Shuruq tower in Gaza City s al-Rimal neighbourhood which was targeted by Israeli strikes during the recent confrontations between Hamas and Israel, on June 7, 2021. (Photo by MOHAMMED ABED / AFP)
2/4 An anti-government protester flashes the victory sign and carries national flag during a protest against the power cuts, the high cost of living, and the low purchasing power of the Lebanese pound, outside of the Lebanese Parliament in Beirut. EPA
BBC News
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image captionRecent photographs showed freshly dug plots at the site of the mass grave
Iranian authorities have ordered members of the minority Bahai religious community to bury their dead in a mass grave for political prisoners executed in 1988, BBC Persian has learned.
Bahai families, as well as relatives of those already buried there, say the instruction was issued last week.
The BBC has seen evidence of at least 10 newly dug graves at the site.
The 350,000 Bahais in Iran are regarded by the Shia Muslim state as members of a heretical sect and face persecution.
Human rights activists say they are routinely harassed, prosecuted and imprisoned by authorities solely for practising their faith, and their places of burial are regularly destroyed.