Updated

A team of Italian specialists has arrived at the site of the Mosul Dam as part of an emergency campaign to repair Iraq's largest dam before it collapses.

The advance team, which arrived Thursday, will set up a camp for the group of engineers who are expected to arrive within a few weeks.

U.S. and Iraqi officials have repeatedly warned that the dam is in imminent danger of collapse.

In late February, the U.S. embassy in Baghdad called the dam's risk of collapse "serious and unprecedented," and Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi asked Mosul residents along the Tigris river to move at least six kilometers (3.7 miles) away from its banks.

The dam outside the Islamic State-held city of Mosul was built in the early 1980s on highly unstable ground.