by Our Foreign Desk

Iraqi army reinforcements rushed to defend a strategically placed oil refinery from Islamic State (Isis) fighters yesterday.

Interior Ministry spokesman Brigadier General Saad Mann denied reports that the terrorist organisation had captured parts of the Beiji refinery in the north of the country — the largest in Iraq.

He claimed it was “impossible” for Isis to take over the refinery.

But provincial government spokesman Adel al-Samaraie contradicted this, asserting that militants were in control of at least half of the site and were trying to cut the main supply route for government troops holding the rest.

“They are advancing and taking over many areas,” he said.

Beiji lies on the road to Isis-occupied Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, and north of Tikrit, the home town of deposed president Saddam Hussein, which was recaptured by the army last month.

Fierce fighting over the refinery has continued for months, despite repeated government claims to have secured the site.

Ammar Hikmat, deputy governor of Salahuddin province, where the refinery is located, said that government troops defending the facility had been assailed since Monday by a wave of suicide attacks using armoured vehicles packed with explosives.

The Iraqi government has dismissed as propaganda recent claims of great military advances by Isis.

But in an apparent admission that the forces defending Beiji had been cut off, officials said a joint force of federal police and militias, known as popular mobilisation units, was working to clear the road to the refinery.

Eight out of 22 bombing raids conducted yesterday by US and other air forces were on tagets around Beiji.

Neighbouring Jordan announced joint military and anti-terrorist exercises by 10,000 troops from 18 nations, including members of the US-led “coalition” against Isis.

US Major General Rick Mattson said the drill would include responses to conventional and unconventional threats, including to border security.

Meanwhile, a car bomb in the Karrada commercial district of Baghdad killed six people.