Kurdish Iraqi peshmerga forces deploy their troops and armored vehicles on the outskirts of Kirkuk (file photo)
Retreating ISIL terrorists have set three Iraqi oil wells ablaze at an oil field north of the country as they battled Kurdish forces that launched a major attack nearby, officials said.
The Takfiri terrorists set the wells on fire Thursday before deserting the Ain Zalah field, which was seized by ISIL forces in early August, an official from the North Oil Company stated.
This is while a colonel in the Kurdish Peshmerga forces announced the launching of a major attack that has seen the ISIL terrorist elements pushed back from several villages in the area of the oil field.
The Takfiri terrorists launched a sweeping offensive in June that overran large areas of Iraq, and turned their sights on Kurdish forces in the north earlier this month, driving them back toward Erbil, the capital of their three-province autonomous region.
The advance, during which the ISIL terrorists targeted minority groups and forced some 200,000 people to flee, sparked a campaign of airstrikes by Iraqi and US war aircraft.
The foreign-sponsored terrorists reportedly raked in significant volumes of cash from the sale of Iraqi oil from the fields they seized.
They have made repeated attempts to seize the Baiji oil refinery, which once filled some 50 percent of Iraq's demand for refined petroleum products.
The offensive by the Takfiri terrorists has wreaked havoc on northern production and exports, but Iraq's main southern fields and export terminals have not been affected by the violence.
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