Iraqis desperately fighting oil fires

ISIL militants torch wells before retreating

QAYARA, IRAQ • For months, residents of the Iraqi town of Qayara have lived under a dark cloud of toxic fumes released by oil well fires lit by retreating Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant fighters.

But in recent days, oil workers and firefighters have extinguished the blazes closest to the populated centre. The move has returned a small measure of order to Qayara, where complaints about government neglect have simmered since the militants torched the oil wells last summer as the Iraqi army drove them out.

The work is far from complete, but it could be a first step in easing some of the bitterness, anger and social fissures among people who desperately need government services and reconciliation after waves of retaliatory violence that followed the defeat of the extremists.

“The atmosphere is good. The wells are almost fully under control. They extinguished most. Some of them are still ablaze, but we see the morning, we can see the sun,” shop owner Mohannad Seoud Ahmad Matar said Tuesday. “Ten days ago, this sky was completely dark. You couldn’t distinguish day from night.”

Eight burning wells have been extinguished in recent weeks, said Oil Ministry spokesman Assem Jihad, adding that most were located near homes. The area’s 54 wells once pumped nearly 10,000 barrels a day before ISIL fighters took the fields in their June 2014 onslaught.

The work has taken so long because of security concerns: Militants initially still fired mortars occasionally into the area, and it also had to be cleared of booby traps and unexploded ordinance left behind.

In one oilfield on Qayara’s outskirts, blackened bulldozers pushed dirt over the burning ground at several sites to try to smother the flames. With each push of the shovel, however, black crude flowed in a new stream, making the task seem futile. Workers without masks wrapped their faces in scarves as protection from the smoke.

Where a burning oil well once raged, children with blackened faces played war, simulating battles between militants and the Iraqi army with fake guns and using rocks as grenades. The Iraqi army triumphed in the end, and the children cheered on a pile of cinder blocks they pretended was a tank.

TEN DAYS AGO, THIS SKY WAS COMPLETELY DARK. YOU COULDN’T DISTINGUISH DAY FROM NIGHT.

FELIPE DANA / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS For months, residents have lived in perpetual darkness from a cloud of toxic fumes released by oilfields — like this one in Qayara, south of Mosul — which have been set on fire by retreating Islamic State fighters.