SHALAMCHEH -- Six tankers, carrying 100,000 liters of drinking water badly needed by residents in southern Iraq, rolled across this Iranian frontier into the city of Basra.

They carried the water to 14 reserves set up in Basra as part of the Islamic Republic's program to ship 105,000 liters of water daily from Khorramshahr to the second Iraqi city, which is 30km away.

Ali Farsani, an official at the governor's office of Khorramshahr in Khuzestan Province, pledged that the Islamic Republic's humanitarian assistance to Iraqis, especially those in the country's south, would continue, IRNA reported.

Over the past month, at least six-truck convoys, carrying Iran's humanitarian aid and that of the United Nations, have crossed the Shalamcheh border crossing into Iraqi cities.

Water supply networks were severely damaged during U.S.-led invasion of Basra in March, plunging the 1.3 million city to the brink of a disaster, with the specter of disease and thirst looming large.

Basra, which is Iraq's second biggest city, is still reeling from the war fallout including shortage of clean water as temperatures in the parched marshlands soar during the day.

Iran has sent several relief convoys to Iraq, especially to southern cities, which have major Shia Muslim populations.

The Imam Khomeini Relief Committee said last Tuesday that it had sent a 60-truck convoy, shipping relief assistance, for the Iraqi people.

The aid included sugar, blankets, cooking oil, rice, cereals, detergents, and bottles for drinking water, which was shipped to the committee's representative offices in the western and southern provinces of West Azarbaijan, Ilam, Kermanshah, and Khuzestan for delivery to the Iraqi people.