Iraq sends troops to key refinery amid heavy clashes with IS

Reinforcements are being rushed to the key Beiji refinery in northern Iraq amid heavy fighting with Islamic State militants who have been trying to capture the facility for months, Iraqi officials said on Tuesday.

But Brig Gen Saad Maan, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, denied during his appearance on state television that the Islamic State group had taken over major parts of the refinery, the country’s largest, as some Iraqi media reported.

Aside from its commercial significance, Beiji is on the road to Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city and the main center of the Islamic State’s power in Iraq. If Iraqi forces hope to eventually take back Mosul, they have to secure Beiji the scene of stubborn fighting for months.

Ammar Hikmat, the deputy governor for Salahuddin province where the refinery is located, told The Associated Press that the troops holding the refinery have been battered since yesterday by a wave of suicide bombings carried out by armored vehicles packed with explosives.

The government has several times said the refinery was under control, but militants have repeatedly counterattacked.

A spokesman for the provincial government, Adel al-Samaraie, said militants are in control of at least half the refinery and are seeking to cut the main supply line to the embattled troops holding the rest.

“They are advancing and taking over many areas,” al-Samaraie told The Associated Press in a phone interview, referring to the militants.

Iraqi state television devoted an hour-long program today to assert that the refinery was still in government hands.

Maan asserted that “it is impossible for the militants to take over the refinery.” 

In recent days, the Iraqi government has decried what it describes as a propaganda war by the Islamic State to exaggerate their advances. The extremist group, which has taken large parts of the north and west of the country, has issued statements online that it has control of most of the refinery.