BAGHDAD Iraqs biggest oil refinery was partially ablaze Wednesday after army

helicopter gunships beat back an attack on the facility northwest of Baghdad by

Islamic extremists, eyewitnesses in the area said.
The attackers, from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, have
surrounded the refinery in Baiji for the past week, but a battalion of the Iraqi army
inside the refinery complex, backed up by air support, has withstood their attacks.
A storage tank was set on fire in the fighting and continued to burn through
the morning after the attack, which took place shortly after midnight.
Foreign workers, including 50 from the German company Siemens and others
employed by the security company Olive Group, had already been evacuated from
the refinery, officials from both companies were quoted by news reports as saying.
The complex, located about halfway between Baghdad and Mosul, Iraqs second-
largest city, includes the refinery the largest in the country as well as a
600-megawatt power plant, which supplies electricity to 11 Iraqi provinces.
Iraqi officials on Tuesday denied that foreign workers had been evacuated
from the plant, and they could not be reached on Wednesday to comment on the
latest reports.
In a separate development, Indian officials have expressed concern about the
fate of 40 Indian workers, who disappeared after ISIS forces overran Mosul, and
46 Indian nurses working at a hospital in Tikrit that is under ISIS control. Indian
newspapers on Wednesday quoted officials worried about the fate of citizens
caught in the fighting in Iraq.
Indian workers in Mosul disappeared, probably kidnapped by ISIS, said
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Yassin al-Maamouri, head of the Iraqi Red Crescent Society. Nobody knows
anything about them.
But Mr. Maamouri said Red Crescent workers visited the Indian nurses at the
hospital in Tikrit and found them in good condition. Nine of them are afraid to
stay here, the rest are fine, he said. We visited them, gave them phone cards to
call their families, gave them food, pocket money.
They are working in the hospital now and feel fine, but on the other hand we
dont know the reaction of those gunmen of ISIS.
Iraqi Oil Refinery Ablaze as Army and Militants Clash - NYTimes.com http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/19/world/middleeast/iraqi-oil-refinery-...
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