Thursday 19 June 2014 14.33 Iraqi government forces regained full control of the country's biggest oil refinery after heavy fighting with Sunni insurgents attempting to seize it.
Sunni insurgents had stormed the complex in Baiji, south of Iraq's second city Mosul setting fire to several storage tanks for refined products in a move that sent jitters through world oil markets.
"The security forces are in full control of the Baiji refinery," Lieutenant General Qassem Atta, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's security spokesman, said in televised remarks.
A refinery employee said that the insurgents had withdrawn, as did other witnesses, who said the assailants quit the sprawling complex in the face of a heavy fightback by security forces.
Clashes erupted at the refinery early yesterday, setting storage tanks for petroleum products alight.
The refinery is the biggest in Iraq, accounting for some 50% of the country's supplies of refined products.
But its catchment area has been sharply curtailed by the militants' seizure of a swathe of northern Iraq, including second city Mosul, which has a population of some two million people.
Saudi Arabia has dismissed as ludicrous an accusation by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that the kingdom backed Sunni insurgents who have seized swathes of northern Iraq.
Speaking to reporters in Jeddah, Foreign Minister Saudi al-Faisal added that the kingdom had criminalised terrorism, especially that perpetrated by the militant Islamic State of Iraq and the Syria (ISIS), and he advised Mr Maliki to follow the policy pursued by the kingdom in eradicating terrorism.
ISIS fighters, also known as ISIL, have grabbed large swaths of northern Iraq and have Baghdad in their sights.
The group's aim is to create an Islamic caliphate encompassing Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.
The Shia-led Iraqi government has repeatedly accused its Sunni Gulf neighbours of backing insurgents in Iraq's restive west. The unfolding crisis has brought relations to a new low.
"I think the country that has suffered most from terrorism and combating terrorism and continuing to combat it...is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia," Prince Saud said.
"(Our) advice to the Iraqi official to combat terrorism in his country is to follow the policy which the Kingdom is following and not to accuse it of being with terrorism.
"Praise be to God we have cleaned our country of this epidemic," he added, in an apparent reference to Mr Maliki.
A day after the government publicly appealed for US air power, there were indications Washington is sceptical of whether that would be effective, given the risk of civilian deaths that could further enrage Iraq's once dominant Sunni minority.
US allies discourage air strikes
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, a NATO ally, said the United States "does not view such attacks positively", given the risk to civilians - a view some US officials have also expressed.
A Saudi source said that Western powers agreed with Riyadh, the main Sunni power in the region, that what was needed was political change, not outside intervention, to heal sectarian division that has widened under Mr Maliki.
Video aired by Al-Arabiya television showed smoke billowing from the plant and the black flag used by ISIS flying from a building.
Workers who had been inside the complex, which spreads for miles close to the Tigris river, said Sunni militants seemed to hold most of the compound in early morning and that security forces were concentrated around the refinery's control room.
The 250-300 remaining staff were evacuated early, one of those workers said by telephone. Military helicopters had attacked insurgent positions overnight, he added.
Baiji, 40km north of Saddam Hussein's home city of Tikrit, lies squarely in territory captured in the past week by an array of armed Sunni groups, spearheaded by ISIS.
On Tuesday, staff shut down the plant, which makes much of the fuel Iraqis in the north need for both transport and generating electricity.
ISIS, which considers Iraq's Shia Muslim majority as heretics in league with neighbouring Shia Iran, has led a Sunni charge across northern Iraq after capturing the major city of Mosul last week as Mr Maliki's US-armed forces collapsed.
The group's advance has only been slowed by a regrouped military, Shia militias and other volunteers.
But on Tuesday, Sunni fighters took the small town of Mutasim, south of Samarra, giving them the prospect of encircling the city which houses a major Shia shrine.
A local police source said security forces withdrew without a fight when dozens of vehicles carrying insurgents converged on Mutasim from three directions.
ISIS, whose leader broke with al-Qaeda after accusing the global jihadist movement of being too cautious, has now secured cities and territory in Iraq and Syria, in effect putting it well on the path to establishing its own well-armed enclave that Western countries fear could become a centre for terrorism.
The Iraqi government made public its request for US air strikes, two and half years after US forces ended the nine-year occupation that began by toppling Saddam in 2003.
US response to request
Washington has given no indication it will agree to attack and some politicians have urged President Barack Obama to insist that Mr Maliki goes as a condition for further US help.
General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, avoided a direct answer when asked by senators whether Washington would accede to the Iraq request.
US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Iraqi request had included drone strikes and increased surveillance by US drones, which have been flying over Iraq.
However, they said, targets for air strikes could be hard to distinguish from civilians among whom ISIS's men were operating.
There is political pressure in Washington for Mr Maliki to quit, although Mr Obama has not made such a demand public. Several leading figures in Congress have spoken out against the premier, whom Mr Obama has urged to do more to overcome sectarian rifts.
"The Maliki government, candidly, has got to go if you want any reconciliation," said Dianne Feinstein, one of Obama's fellow Democrats, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Republican senator John McCain urged Obama to "make it make very clear to Maliki that his time is up".
Iran prepared to intervene
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani made the clearest declaration yet on Wednesday that the Middle East's main Shia power, which fought a war against Saddam that killed a million people in the 1980s, was prepared to intervene to protect Iraq's great shrines, visited by millions of Shia pilgrims annually.
A Twitter account regarded as carrying the views of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, posted a comment on Thursday accusing Sunni militants, abetted by Western powers, of trying to "create a war in Muslim world" and appealing to Sunnis and Shias to resist falling into mutual mistrust.
Iraqi troops are holding off Sunni fighters outside Samarra. The fighters have vowed to carry their offensive south to Najaf and Kerbala, seats of Shia Islam since the Middle Ages.
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