Iraq fights militants for control of refinery
Iraqi forces and Sunni militants battle fiercely for control of the nation’s largest oil refinery, as the prime minister reaches out on TV in an attempt to regain support from Sunnis and Kurds.
BAGHDAD — Iraqi forces and Sunni militants battled fiercely for control of the nation’s largest oil refinery on Wednesday as Prime Minister Nouri alMaliki went on adiplomatic offensive, reaching out in a televised address to try to regain support from the nation’s disaffected Sunnis and Kurds.
Meanwhile, the government asserted that it had retaken partial control of a strategic city near the border with Syria.
Al-Maliki’s conciliatory words, coupled with a vow to teach the militants a “lesson,” came as almost all Iraq’s main communities have been drawn into a spasm of violence not seen since the dark days of sectarian killings nearly a decade ago.
The U.S. has been pressing al-Maliki to adopt political inclusion and undermine the insurgency by making overtures to Iraq’s once- dominant Sunni minority, which has long complained of discrimination by his government.
In Washington, President Barack Obama briefed leaders of Congress on options for quelling the alQaida-inspired insurgency, though White House officials said the president had made no decisions about how to respond to the crumbling security situation in Iraq. While Obama has not fully ruled out the possibility of launching airstrikes, such action is not imminent, officials said, in part because intelligence agencies have been unable to identify clear targets on the ground.
Al-Maliki, a Shiite, has rejected charges of bias against Iraq’s Sunnis and Kurds and in recent days has been stressing that the threat posed by the militant Islamic State of Iraq Syria will affect all Iraqis regardless of their ethnic or religious affiliations.
The Iraqi military said government forces had repelled repeated attacks by the militants on the country’s largest oil refinery and retaken parts of the strategic city of Tal Afar.
The chief military spokesman, Lt. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, said Iraqi army troops had defended the refinery at Beiji, some 155 miles north of Baghdad, and 40 attackers were killed in fighting there overnight and early Wednesday.
An employee at the oil refinery reached by the Associated Press late Wednesday also said the facility remained in government hands, though one of its fuel tanks was on fire after it apparently was hit by a mortar shell fired by the militants.
The Beiji refinery accounts for a little morethan a quarter of the country’s entire refining capacity.
There was no indepen- dent confirmation of the military’s claims about the Beiji refinery or that its forces had retaken neighborhoods in Tal Afar, which Sunni fighters captured Monday. Both are in territories held by insurgents that journalists have not been able to access. Tal Afar’s proximity to the Syrian border strengthens the Islamic State’s plan to carve out an Islamic caliphate, or state, stretching across parts of the two countries.
Also Wednesday, a bomb blast killed four and wounded 11 in the mostly Sunni district of Ghazaliyah in western Baghdad.
Meanwhile, the government in India said 40 construction workers have been seized near Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul, which Sunni fighters captured last week.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry said it was investigating a Turkish media report that militants grabbed 60 foreign construction workers, including some 15 Turks, near Kirkuk.