Islamic State militants withdrew on Saturday from the perimeter of Iraq’s biggest oil refinery after months fending off government troops seeking to retake the strategic complex, said an army officer and Al-Hadath television station.
The officer, speaking to Reuters from the Baiji refinery, said the Sunni insurgents removed roadside bombs they had planted and fled. Al-Hadath said security forces had entered the compound.
It was not immediately possible to confirm either account.
Islamic State militants surrounded the Baiji refinery, some 110 miles north of Baghdad, in June, trapping pro-government forces inside. But a contingent of Iraqi soldiers and government-aligned militia held out against the jihadists, who staged repeated attacks in a bid to seize the terminal.
Police Brig. Gen. Khalil Ramal Ahmed said on Saturday as many as 400 police forces had infiltrated the refinery from the south after the militants mounted full retreat. But a spokesman for Asaib ahl al-Haq, a government-aligned Shiite militia with forces inside the refinery, also said on Saturday afternoon that the siege had not yet been broken.
Pro-government forces “are very close, just a few meters away,” Naim al-Aboudi, the spokesman, said. He said the jihadists had planted dozens of improvised explosive devices to slow the government advance.
“They have many wounded and they are retreating,” he said of the Islamic State fighters. “But we are not inside yet.”
