An Italian company, Italiana Trevi, has won a tender to repair the northern Iraqi city of Mosul's crumbling dam, over 16 months after it was retaken from the Islamic State jihadist group.
"I believe the contract will be signed within the next few days," said Italy's foreign minister Paolo Gentiloni, announcing the news.
At a meeting in Rome on Tuesday of the US-led international coalition against IS, US secretary of state John Kerry described the task of repairing Iraq's biggest dam as "a major challenge".
Rome and Baghdad will agree on the deployment of Italian troops to protect Mosul's dam, Gentiloni said.
US State department officials have warned that up to 500,000 people could be killed and more than a million left homeless should Mosul Dam collapse due to insufficient maintenance and rising waters.
Rising water levels in spring, when the Tigris river is swollen by rain and melting snow, could lead to the breach of the 3.6 kilometre-long dam which was retaken from IS by Iraqi and Kurdish forces in 2014.
