5 dead in attacks on oil, gas facilities in Kurdish areas of Iraq

Militants assaulted a gas facility and a nearby oil field in north Iraq on Sunday, killing five people in rare attacks inside Kurdish-controlled areas of Kirkuk province, officials said.

Gunmen travelling on motorbikes opened fire on the gas facility’s guards, then killed four of its employees and planted multiple bombs before escaping, officials from Iraq’s North Oil Company and the Kurdish peshmerga forces said.

Militants also attacked the nearby Bai Hassan oil field, the largest in oil-rich Kirkuk province, killing an engineer and sparking a major fire, officials said.

A colonel in the peshmerga said that security forces killed two suicide bombers at the field while a third detonated explosives, setting oil tanks ablaze, and a fourth was still at large.

Police Brigadier General Sarhad Qader confirmed that three bombers were dead.

— AFP