A massive fire at an oil refinery in Iraqi Kurdistan raged for about 20 hours and injured at least 14 firefighters before it was finally brought under control on Thursday.
The fire broke out in a major crude oil tank on Wednesday night and quickly spread to a second refinery on a road southwest of Arbil, the capital of the autonomous northern region of Kurdistan.
Thick plumes of black smoke and balls of orange flame rose into the sky above the facility, as reported by an AFP photographer. The civil defence agency stated that the fire, the cause of which remains unclear, "started in one refinery before spreading to another".
Shakhwan Saeed, a spokesman for the civil defence agency, told a news conference on Thursday evening that the fire had been "100 percent contained" and that there was no longer any danger for the surrounding refineries. He also mentioned that 150 rescuers had been mobilized and 14 had been injured, with two in critical condition.
Arbil governor Omed Khoshnaw said that three rescuers were being treated in hospital for burns and another 10 suffered breathing difficulties.
The main storage tank that was impacted contained more than 5,000 tonnes of fuel, putting the estimated cost of the damage caused at $8 million.
The Arbil civil defence reported that four fuel tanks as well as three fire trucks were burned. The cause of the fire is still unknown, with Khoshnaw suggesting it could have been an electrical short circuit.
Saeed noted that the facility did not meet "any of the standards" set by the civil defence agency for safety. With Iraq experiencing scorching summers, the country has seen multiple fires in recent weeks, affecting shopping centres, warehouses, and hospitals.
Iraq is one of the world's biggest oil producers, and crude oil sales make up 90 percent of budget revenues. However, exports from the Kurdistan region have been halted for more than a year in a dispute over legal and technical issues.
