SUNDAY TIMES WEB DESK: The water moving south from Ilam and Lorestan provinces will enter Khuzestan… many villages there will be submerged,” said Ali Asghar Peivandi, the head of Iran’s Red Crescent.
“With the possibility of dams overflowing, we have made preparations to accommodate 100,000 people,” he told state television.
Khuzestan has an extensive range of dams but officials said water was flowing into them at a fast rate.
In some cases water levels were only 70 centimetres (around 27 inches) lower than the dam crests, they reported.
“Our dams are more than 95 per cent full,” Khuzestan governor Gholamreza Shariati told state TV.
Water was released from dams as an emergency measure to prevent them from breaking, leading to fears the outflow may cause havoc in cities, towns and villages downstream.