11 killed in suicide car bomb attack on Baghdad gas plant

ISLAMIC State terrorists attacked a gas works in Baghdad’s northern outskirts yesterday, killing at least 11 people.

A suicide car bomb went off at the entrance of the facility in Taji, allowing another vehicle carrying at least six attackers with explosive vests to enter, police sources said. Twenty-one people were wounded.

The militant group said in a statement that four fighters had shot the guards at the plant which it said was being used by the Iraqi army.

A spokesman for Baghdad operations command said three of the facility’s gas storages were set alight before security forces were able to bring the situation under control.

Iraq’s oil ministry said the attack had not disrupted the plant’s production of gas for cooking and electricity production. But the electricity ministry said two nearby power stations had halted operations due to a cut in gas supplies from the Taji plant.

It was unclear how long it would take to restore flow to the power stations.

A video on Al Hadath TV showed a fireball surging from the plant. Dozens of police and army vehicles rushed to the site where shooting lasted for about an hour, according to witnesses.

A US-led coalition backing the Iraqi government in its fight against IS has been training army forces for months at a military base located in Taji.

IS, which controls swathes of the country’s north and west, has carried out a string of bombings in the past week killing around 100 people.

Separate explosions in Baghdad’s southern outskirts yesterday left three people dead and 12 wounded, police sources said.