Two oil wells in Kirkuk, Iraq, have been set on fire by Islamic State (IS) jihadists, Oil Minister Ihsan Abdul-Jabbar Ismail said, adding that the fires have been successfully extinguished.
Iraqi oil firms managed to extinguish the fires in the two wells of Khubbaz oilfield in Kirkuk province at an unprecedented time on Wednesday, Xinhua’s news agency quoted Ismail as saying in a letter to Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi.
Ismail lauded the actions of employees of the Iraqi North Oil Company and the national oil firms who advocate the extinction of oil wells, stressing that this is the appropriate response to terrorism that targets the national oil wealth”
On December 9, a source from the North Oil Company told Xinhua that IS insurgents had planted two bombs in the Khubbaz oilfield, some 250 km north of Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, and blew them up, triggering major fires in the two wells.
Iraq’s oil facilities and pipelines have repeatedly been targeted by jihadist IS insurgents amid an increase in the country’s security situation after the government announced a complete defeat of the terrorist group across the country late in 2017.
