Asia's biggest desert reservoir dries up

Asia's biggest desert reservoir, the Muruin in north China, has dried up due to a four-year drought, reports said on Wednesday.

Asia's biggest desert reservoir, the Muruin, has dried up due to a four-year drought in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, state press said on Wednesday.

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Wang Zhan, an official in charge of the management of the 40 square km reservoir, said almost all the aquatic life was dead with fish piled up to one meter high in some places, Xinhua news agency said.

Located in the sandy Horqin area near Tongliao city, the reservoir sits on the trunk stream of the West Liaohe River, the source of water for the reservoir which dried up both in 2001 and 2002 due to continuous drought, it said.

The reservoir, which has a storage capacity of 192 million cubic meters and produces 250,000 kg of fish in a normal year, is one of the 300 biggest reservoirs on the Chinese mainland.