‘Daesh Used Oil Tanks to Make Suicide Cars’: A Journey into Iraq’s Liberated Energy Complex
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – On a calm day in early spring, a member of the Iraqi voluntary forces, known as the Popular Mobilization Units or Hashid al-Shaabi, guided a Tasnim reporter through an oil and gas complex in northern Iraq that has been recently retaken from the Daesh (ISIL) terrorist group.
Once a major center for reserving oil and gas, a devastated complex near Ain al-Baidha village in al-Shirqat district is the only thing that has remained after Daesh (ISIL) militants fled the area in northern Iraq.
A Hashid al-Shaabi member guided Tasnim reporter into different parts of the complex, located south of Iraq’s northern city of Mosul.
Daesh had turned the complex into a headquarters before the Iraqi fighters booted them out of the area in an attack in March, he explained.
According to the Hashid al-Shaabi member, the Takfiri terrorists had destroyed the oil tanks to detach their 12-millimeter-thick iron walls for making explosive-laden vehicles.
Daesh is not only an enemy of humanity, Shiites, Sunnis and Izadis, but also an enemy of the environment, infrastructures, and everything, he added.
Iraq has been facing the growing threat of terrorism, mainly posed by the Daesh terrorist group.
Daesh militants made advances in northern and western Iraq over the summer of 2014, after capturing swaths of northern Syria.
The Iraqi army launched a major offensive last year to purge Daesh from Mosul, the country’s second city.
