Kuwait to Help Iraqis Purify Water

KUWAIT CITY (AP) — Kuwait said Sunday it was sending eight water purification and desalination plants to Iraq to help prevent the spread of cholera.

The statement from the Kuwaiti Cabinet’s weekly meeting did not say when the plants would be sent or give other details.

Two hospitals have reported 17 cases of cholera in Basra, Iraq’s second largest city. The World Health Organization fears far more have gone unreported.

Water facilities damaged during the U.S.-led war that toppled Saddam Hussein are still not working to full capacity, depriving most Iraqis of clean drinking water.

Kuwait was invaded by Saddam’s forces in August 1990 and occupied for seven months before a U.S.-led coalition drove Iraqis out in the 1991 Gulf War.

Seeking to prove it has no quarrel with the Iraqi people, this small oil-rich state has offered them food and medical aide. It has also supplied the southern Iraqi town of Umm Qasr with desalinated water.

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