Refinery workers, witnesses, and an Iraqi army officer reported the seizure of Iraq’s biggest oil refinery by Sunni extremists Wednesday after army helicopter gunships failed to repel their attack.
But other Iraqi officials, including the commander of the garrison defending the refinery in Baiji, asserted that fighting was still going on inside the extensive facility, which was shut down by the violence.
The battle in Baiji, 130 miles north of Baghdad, came as the Obama administration, which extricated US troops from Iraq less than three years ago, was weighing a more muscular response, including airstrikes, to help the besieged government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Wednesday in Saudi Arabia that Iraq had asked for US airstrikes, according to Al Arabiya television. That would make Zebari the first top Iraqi official to publicly confirm that request, reported by The New York Times last week.
If the insurgent takeover of Baiji is confirmed, the facility would be the first operating refinery to fall to the fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria who have swept through much of northern Iraq. They have surrounded the refinery in Baiji for the past week, fighting a battalion of the Iraqi army that had been backed by air support.
The loss of the refinery could deny the Iraq government an important source of fuel and provide the insurgents with a potentially lucrative source of income, assuming that they can ensure its continued operation and sell the fuel, at least in the areas they control. The Islamic State already profits from its control of oil resources in eastern Syria.
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