BAGHDAD: Baghdad's residents are miserable in the scorching heat of summer. There is not enough electricity to power air conditioners and taps in large parts of the Iraqi capital have run dry.

Surviving summer is always a challenge for residents in a city whose crumbling infrastructure has been difficult to repair and maintain amid the daily car bombings and shootings that have derailed Iraq's reconstruction.

The 50 degree Celsius temperatures drop only a few degrees at night. Power from the national electricity grid is too feeble to run air conditioners so many people resort to sleeping on their roofs to escape the baking heat of their homes. But that offers little respite.

Water shortages in Baghdad are nothing new, particularly in the Shia districts on the eastern side of the Tigris River that were neglected under Saddam Hussein's rule. But now a large part of the capital's mainly Sunni Arab west has also dried up.

Residents in western Baghdad, known as Kharkh, said they had been without water for about four days and were having to buy bottled drinking water, an additional expense that many poorly paid Iraqis can ill-afford. They are already struggling with the high cost of diesel for their home generators.

At night, water from an emergency reservoir trickles out of the taps for one or two hours. Kharkh residents have to stay awake to switch on their electrical pumps to boost the water flow and try to fill their tanks before the taps run dry again.