BAGHDAD // Iraqi forces retook most of the country’s largest oil refinery from ISIL on Saturday, reversing gains by the militants who seized parts of the sprawling complex this week.
The insurgents attacked Iraq’s Beiji refinery a week ago by blasting through the security perimeter around it and taking over several installions, including storage tanks.
A spokesman for Iraq’s counterterrorism forces said troops protecting the refinery had now retaken most facilities, although there were still small pockets of insurgents left on the site.
“We expect to regain full control within a couple of hours,” said Sabah Al Noamani.
Earlier in the day, Abdel-Wahab Al Saadi, the top military commander in Iraq’s Salahuddin province, said ground forces had secured the refinery’s perimeter and entered the vast complex amid heavy clashes with ISIL militants.
The refinery has remained under government control, but militants had been surrounding the entire complex, preventing access by Iraqi forces.
Government forces, backed by powerful Shiite militias and coalition airstrikes, recaptured Tikrit, the capital of Salahuddin, on April 1, and have been gradually pushing their offensive north to secure the rest of the province.
ISIL suffered a major defeat with the retaking of Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s hometown, but have since struck back, both at Beiji and in the western province of Anbar.
Thousands of families have fled Anbar in recent days as ISIL militants gained ground on th provincial capital Ramadi and local officials warned that the city was about to fall.
However, two members of the Anbar provincial council and police major Khalid Al Fahdawi, who is stationed inside Ramadi, said reinforcements were on the way and that the city was no longer in immediate peril.
“The danger is still there, but the situation is better than yesterday,” said provincial council member Sabah Karhout.
Late on Friday, the top US military officer said that even though ISIL militants were closing in on Ramadi, American airstrikes were concentrating more on protecting Beiji, a strategically important town, and its refinery.
Army general Martin Dempsey, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said Ramadi was “not symbolic in any way” and that the United States would want to regain control of the city. But, he said, Beiji’s oil infrastructure is important for Iraq, so the US was focusing a lot of airstrikes there.
Since Friday morning, the US coalition against ISIL had launched 20 airstrikes targeting the group in Iraq and Syria, the combined joint task force leading the operations said on Saturday.
There were seven air strikes in Syria using attack and bomber aircraft near Kobani and Al Hassakah, and 13 in Iraq using fighter and attack aircraft as well as drones near Beiji, Ramadi, Al Asad, Fallujah, Sinjar, Hit and Tal Afar, it said in a statement.
Meanwhile, ISIL on Saturday claimed a bombing near the US consulate in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region the day before that killed two Turks.
“Security detachments were able to ... detonate a car bomb left at the American consulate building in the city that led to the killing and wounding of many of them,” said ISIL in a daily audio message posted online.
But the US state department said the bombing in Ainkawa, near the Kurdish regional capital of Erbil, did not kill or wound any consular employees.
On Saturday, Saman Barzanchi, head of Erbil’s health department, said that two ethnically Kurdish Turks were killed and eight people wounded.
Officials had said on Friday that three people were killed.
An ISIL-spearheaded offensive overran large areas of Iraq last year, and forces from the Kurdistan region have battled the extremists on multiple fronts in the north.
The relatively stable region has largely been spared the bombings and shootings that have plagued other parts of Iraq on an almost daily basis.
The last major attack was a suicide car bombing near the governor’s Erbil compound in November.
* Reuters, Agence France-Presse and Associated Press
