Missile Attack Hits Oil Refinery In Iraq After Security Forces Raid Launch Pad

Photo archive - Flames emerge from a chimney at the Taq Taq oil field in Arbil, in the Kurdistan region of Iraq (ANTARA/REUTERS/Azad Lashkari/pri)

JAKARTA - A missile attack targeting an oil refinery in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil on Sunday 1 May caused a fire in one of the main tanks of the country's oil refinery.

The fires are grateful to have been brought under control, Iraqi security forces said in a statement Monday, May 2.

A missile also landed on the fence outside the oil refinery causing no casualties, the Iraqi security forces statement said.

Earlier on Sunday, the anti-terrorism authority in the Kurdistan region said that six missiles landed near a refinery belonging to the company KAR in Erbil, and the missiles were launched from Nineveh province.

Iraqi security forces said they found a launch pad and four missiles on the Nineveh Plain after the attack and immediately defused the missiles.

A total of three missiles also fell near the refinery on April 6, causing no casualties.

Sources within the Kurdistan Regional Government told Reuters that the refinery was owned by an Iraqi Kurdish businessman named Baz Karim Barzanji, who is CEO of the main domestic energy company KAR Group.

In March, Iran struck Erbil with a dozen ballistic missiles in an unprecedented attack on the capital of Iraq's Kurdish autonomous region.

The ballistic missile attack appears to have targeted the United States and its allies. Only one person was injured in the attack.