Iraqi security forces retake country’s largest oil refinery

But the Iraqi government has claimed at least three times that the facility had been liberated, only to have it slip back under Islamic State control in an area characterized by sympathy for the Islamic State and its predecessor, al Qaida in Iraq.

US Army Colonel Steve Warren, a spokesman in Baghdad for the US-led coalition that is fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, said Iraqi ground forces have advanced about 15 kilometres (nine miles) in recent days and are in the city’s outer suburbs.

Hadi al-Ameri and several other top commanders from the Hashed al-Shaabi, an umbrella organisation dominated by Tehran-backed Shiite militia groups, were supervising operations in the area.

The refinery, which once produced 300,000 barrels per day of refined products meeting half of Iraq’s needs, is said to have been damaged beyond fix and to no longer be of huge strategic interest.

The Iraqi forces’ next goal is to recapture the nearby town of Baiji.

The troops, who were covered by U.S.-led coalition and Iraqi aircraft, also regained control of an army headquarters in north of the oil refinery of Baiji, which has been used by IS militants as a headquarters, the source said, adding that fierce clashes still underway inside the refinery between the troops and IS militants who seize large parts of it.

“Any military that required more than a year to capture a small town – and we’re not even sure they can actually hold Baiji at this stage – is not in any sort of position to mount an offensive on these cities”, the adviser said, asking that he not be identified because of his relationship to the Kurdish government.

The next step after Beiji, Iraqi officials said, will include operations to take the nearby towns of Hawija and Shirgat, where tough fighting is likely. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced on Monday night the second phase of a large-scale military campaign to drive IS militants out of that area.

The leader of the Iranian-backed paramilitary group Asaib Ahl al-Haq, Sheik Qais al-Khazali, was filmed in a military uniform accompanying troops inside the refinery in a video released by the group’s TV channel, al-Ahad.

The footage showed the troops walking through the wreckage of the refinery complex as black smoke billowed from different areas. The difficulties the Iraqis have had in holding onto the refinery point to the more formidable challenge they would confront in any operation to retake Mosul or other Islamic State strongholds. It did not provide additional details on the operation at the sprawling refinery.

The government resisted for more than a year in the capital of the western Anbar province until IS forces blitzed them out with dozens of suicide truck bombs in mid-May.

After months of preliminary skirmishes and hundreds of USA airstrikes, conditions are now right for Iraq to launch a decisive assault on Ramadi and reclaim the provincial capital from Islamic State fighters, a U.S. military official said Tuesday.

Army Major General Ali Dabbun said his forces, with backing from local Sunni tribal fighters, had made good progress in Baghdadi.