IRBIL, Iraq (AP) — A team of 32 firefighters in northern Iraq worked to extinguish a massive fire Thursday, a day after it broke out at an oil refinery, local officials said.
The fire broke out late Wednesday at a large refinery in Irbil, in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq.
Shakhawan Saeed, a spokesman for Irbil’s Ministry of Civil Protection, said 14 firefighters were injured – four with burns and the other from smoke inhalation – while fighting the blaze, which also destroyed four fire trucks.
Saeed said the cause of the fire was not yet clear, but the facility appeared to lack safety measures, including alarms and fire extinguishers. The owner of the refinery was not immediately available for comment.
A regional government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media, told the Associated Press that the fire appeared to be caused by an electrical fault.
Irbil Governor Omed Khoshnaw said the financial damage caused by the refinery fire was estimated at $8 million.
The Khazir refinery, owned by local private businessmen, is one of the largest in Irbil and produces gasoline, kerosene and white oil. It was an important supplier for the city of Mosul.
Iraq’s Kurdish region produces hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil every day. Previously, a large part of production was exported via Turkey, but exports have been at a standstill for over a year due to a ruling in an international arbitration case.
The central government considers it illegal for Irbil to export oil without the intervention of Iraq’s national oil company and has won the arbitration case against such trade.
In Iraq, summer fires are often fueled by scorching temperatures, unreliable electricity and lax safety standards in many facilities.
In May, a fire broke out in a bazaar in Erbil, burning at least 200 shops and four warehouses and injuring at least 100 people.
On Sunday, a massive fire engulfed commercial storage units in central Baghdad, covering an area of 3,000 square meters made of highly flammable material, and killed four foreign Arab workers.
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Zeyad reported from Baghdad. Associated Press journalist Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad contributed to this report.
