Sunni militants attacked Iraq's largest oil refinery, located in Baiji in northern Iraq, with machine-gun fire and mortars on Wednesday, Iraqi security sources and refinery employees said, according to The Associated Press.
The attack started at 4 am from outside two of the three main entrances to the sprawling facility, the AP reported. One mortar hit a spare-parts warehouse and smoke billowed from the building, the sources said.
On Tuesday, foreigners were evacuated from the refinery as security forces braced for an attack on the compound, according to the AP.
In a televised address to the nation, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki struck an optimistic tone and vowed to teach the attackers a "lesson," even though Iraqi soldiers abandoned their posts in the wake of the initial militant offensive, the AP reported.
"We have now started our counteroffensive, regaining the initiative and striking back," al-Maliki said, according to the AP.
The campaign by the al-Qaida-inspired Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has raised the specter of the sectarian warfare that nearly tore the country apart in 2006 and 2007, the AP reported. The relentless violence that followed the 2003 U.S.-led invasion now haunts those trying to decide how to respond.
The U.S. is pressing al-Maliki to undermine the insurgency by making overtures to Iraq's once-dominant Sunni minority, which has long complained of discrimination by al-Maliki's government and excesses by his Shiite-led security forces, according to the AP.
Al-Maliki, a Shiite, has consistently rejected charges of bias against the Sunnis and has in recent days been stressing the notion that the threat posed by the Islamic State will affect all Iraqis regardless of their ethnic or religious affiliations, the AP reported. He appeared Tuesday night on television with Sunni leaders and politicians as a sign of solidarity.
