MOSUL: Water supplies have been cut off to around 650,000 residents in the Iraqi city of Mosul after a pipeline was hit during fighting between the army and Islamic State, a local official said on Tuesday.

"The maintenance team cannot reach the pipeline because it lies in an area being fought over," Hussam al-Abar, a member of Mosul's Nineveh provincial council, told Reuters in one of the 15 districts and suburbs of the city where water was cut off.

"We are facing a humanitarian catastrophe."