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Page added on April 12, 2015
Jihadists attack Iraq’s largest oil refinery
Islamic State militants on Saturday launched suicide attacks against the Baiji oil refinery, Iraq’s largest, a senior army officer said.
The jihadist group claimed it broke in but the Iraqi army said the site, which has been the scene of fierce battles since IS swept across the region last year, remained under its control.
“Today Daesh (an Arab acronym for IS) launched an attack against the Baiji oil refinery,” said a major general from Salaheddin province, in which Baiji is located.
He described the attack on the refinery, which lies around 200 kilometres (120 miles) north of Baghdad, as “the fiercest since we broke the siege a few months ago.”
The officer and other military sources said the attack was launched around 7:00 am (0400 GMT) and led to clashes.
He said IS militants attacked the large complex from three fronts: Al-Bujwari village to the south, the housing compound for refinery employees to the west and one of the smaller plants producing derivatives to the east.
“Three suicide attackers were able to reach the entrances of the refinery. Two were killed but one managed to blow himself up,” the army officer said.
He said that the Iraqi forces protecting the refinery regained control of the entrances and that the entire site was now under government control.
IS released pictures showing convoys of their Humvees attacking the refinery perimeter and of fighters apparently inside the limits of the site.
The army officer said 20 jihadist fighters were killed in raids by the Iraqi air force, although that figure could not be verified.
“Daesh is trying to send the message that they are everywhere but in fact they are defeated and cannot advance,” he said.
The Islamic State group launched a massive offensive on northwestern Iraq in June and swept across much of the country’s sunni Arab heartland within days.
Counter-terrorism and other forces tasked with protecting the vital refinery held out and remained besieged for months.
An Iraqi operation, backed by air strikes from a US-led coalition, eventually broke the siege in October and retook the city, which lies just south of the refinery.
The jihadists have since wrested the city back.
Following their victory in Tikrit earlier this month, government forces will have to re-take it once again as they continue to move north towards the main IS hub of Mosul.
The Baiji refinery once produced some 300,000 barrels of refined petroleum products per day, meeting 50 percent of the country’s needs.
8 Comments on "Jihadists attack Iraq’s largest oil refinery"
joe on Sun, 12th Apr 2015 8:05 am
IS seem to have reached their limits. Operating outside to sympathetic areas they are a normal defeatable group of vikings. Blow up rubble in the desert, that’s not terrorism. Europe spawned Hitler, only in the small brainwashed mind of a jihadi is what they do called terror. Keep blowing up rubble guys, your CIA masters have you right where they want you. Fighting season is on again. Many will travel for a payday and an adventure. But they will have to fight this time without all those abandoned tanks and weapons. Okay, fair to say, Iraqi shia abused their power and got spanked for it. Now though Iraqi sunni and those in Syria supporting them will have to wake up from their dreaming. Syria is a majority sunni nation, their government should reflect this. Islam is reverting back to what the old British empire tried to fight and what the US is going to fail fighting, despotism. Islamic culture, loves despotism. They want to believe their leaders are strong and moral and fair, they don’t need or want democracy in that case. They don’t care if their leaders are just weak men like western ones, just as long as they are seen to be strong. The British called this view ‘orientalism’, modern liberalism has its roots fighting this idea as it removed to idea of progressiveness among Muslims. Liberals have always been wrong in this regard, and every time they are doubling down their bets they are making the consequences worse. They should have supported socialism in these nations and then fought communism after, rather than training ‘FREEDOM FIGHTERS’. Look at the fruits liberalism and globalisation. Isn’t it beautiful. Wait until this sour tree bears it’s fruit.
rockman on Sun, 12th Apr 2015 9:14 am
“Blow up rubble in the desert, that’s not terrorism.” No, it isn’t. But blowing up a refinery or any other facility, market, etc. is terrorism. So is flying an airplane into a building. IS will never be able to hold a defined area if TPTB decide they won’t. If the US wanted to take a controlled area away from IS it would happen: just takes $’s and casualties. It’s just a matter of willing to write that check.
But taking away the IS terrorism capability wouldn’t be any easier then it has been for any other group focused on disruption…or at least the threat of it. Especially if one starts classifying such activities as the Saudi activities in Yemen as “terrorism”.
Nony on Sun, 12th Apr 2015 9:42 am
The problem is the Shia are not brutal enough.
Plantagenet on Sun, 12th Apr 2015 11:14 am
IS never launched a “massive” attack in Iraq as this article claims. A few thousand IS jihadis advanced toward Mosul and the Iraqi army threw down their weapons and ran away.
Now Shia militias are retaking land and defeating the small number of IS fighters with the help of US bombing raids that level urban areas where the IS fighters hiding.
Makati1 on Sun, 12th Apr 2015 9:03 pm
The terrorists are the ones paying for all of this with money and munitions, America and it’s Saudi master. But the ones pointing the finger cannot see that three of them point back. America has no mirrors.
jjhman on Sun, 12th Apr 2015 10:09 pm
The problems in the Mideast are sorta complex. There are the subtleties of Islamic culture which are so poorly understood in the West. There is the corrupting influence of so much petroleum wealth. There are the errors made by Britain and France in the period between the world wars and until the 1950s when those countries finally gave up their imperialistic ambitions. The US, big kid on the block since then, has failed to understand the complex of problems above while trying to keep the oil flowing for western civilization. There is the creation of Israel out of the guilt everyone in the west felt for the Holocaust. There is the inherent rapacity of western civilization related to the oil wealth.
I get pretty sick of people trying to blame the US for all of this. Can’t you people get past your mindless hatred and think? Name a world power that ever behaved better. Name one.
Apneaman on Mon, 13th Apr 2015 12:26 am
The blame and criticism goes with the territory-always has always will.
I could probably do a scathing critique of the Roman or Persian empires, but it would probably seem untimely don’t cha think? Besides jjhman it’s not just America. The entirety of the Western model is completely fucked beyond reform – and the rest are all copying.
Makati1 on Mon, 13th Apr 2015 2:08 am
jjhman is obviously an American, Apneaman. They only know how to play the blame game, not accept their guilt.
No empire in the history of the world has had the power to destroy all life on the planet and has used that threat to bully the entire world to bow at their feet as has America. I blame the lazy loafers who prefer to “let someone else do it” for the problem being allowed to grow.