TEHRAN -- Head of the Natural Disasters Office in Kermanshah Province Soltanmorad Salimi on Thursday said that Severe drought conditions which has hit Iran for the third straight year have led to a disruption in drinking water supplies in 275 villages of Kermanshah.

Water is currently supplied in 20 tanks to those villages, he said, adding 125 other villages in the province are also facing severe shortages of potable water in the province.

Iran is suffering from severe drought conditions for the third year in a row which cost the country 3.5 billion dollars last year. A UN official has put this year's loss at $2.5 billion.

Deputy Energy Minister Gholamreza Manouchehri said recently that water has been rationed in 30 cities in the southern, eastern and central provinces of Sistan-Baluchistan, Isfahan, Fars, Bushehr, Kerman, Khorasan and Tehran.

Early this year officials predicted that 12 of Iran's 28 provinces would be affected by a severe drought, including the capital Tehran which started water rationing from the first week of June.

Last year the drought, which hit the country, destroyed about three million tons of wheat and barley as well as a million head of livestock, thereby increasing Iran's dependency on food imports.

Also, the United Nations' representative for environmental affairs, during a visit to Hermoud, Larestan region of Fars Province on Wednesday, said the damage inflicted by three successive years of drought in the province are severe and irreparable.

The Head of the Province's Environment Department, Mohammad-Hassan Pirasteh said that the UN representative, during his visit, was furnished reports of damages inflicted on various parts of the province.

The UN official was greatly disturbed by the damage inflicted on the region, Pirasteh told IRNA.

He further noted that visits of the kind to the country's drought-striken regions provide valuable opportunities for assessing and preparing a report on the resulting damage, as well as presenting ways of fighting the crisis and eliciting some kind of financial aid from international organizations such as the UN.