Iraq: The Islamic State Threatens to Capture Massive Iraqi Oil Refinery

May 15, 2015 | Hugh Naylor, Washington Post
View Original

Six months after the government triumphantly announced that Islamic State militants had retreated from Iraq’s largest refinery, the extremist group is again threatening to overrun the facility. For weeks, soldiers, police officers and Shiite militiamen have struggled to hold their ground inside the Baiji oil complex during a brutal siege by the Islamic State. The militant group’s suicide bombers have relentlessly struck the perimeters of the refinery, about 150 miles north of the capital, and pushed deep inside the massive facility.