Iraq puts out IS-set huge fires in Qayyara's oilfield

The Iraqi Oil Ministry on Tuesday said firefighters have put out fires at six oil wells near the town of Qayyara, which Iraqi forces freed from the Islamic State (IS) militants late last month.

The extremist militants sabotaged many of the town's oil installations before fleeing Qayyara, some 50 km south of the major IS stronghold in Mosul, ahead of the advance of the security forces.

The huge fires of Qayyara's oilfield have been sending black smoke into the sky for several days, while the destruction of the oil infrastructure let crude oil pouring into the nearby Tigris River.

"The firefighting included removing explosives from these wells, extinguishing fires and preventing crude oil from leaking into the river to prevent pollution," the ministry said in a statement.

The ministry's teams and firefighters also "built dirt walls and dug trenches to prevent the leaked oil from reaching to the residential neighborhoods of Qayyara," the statement quoted the ministry spokesman Asim Jihad as saying.

"The terrorist gangs set fires by planting explosives in the wells before they fled the town," Jihad said, adding that three more oil wells still on fire but they are outside the control of the security forces and will be extinguished as soon as the troops regain control of their area.

On Aug. 25, Iraqi security forces freed the strategic town of Qayyara, which will be used as a staging ground for the government troops to free Iraq's last major IS stronghold in Mosul, some 400 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.

Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq, has been under the IS control since June 2014, when Iraqi government forces abandoned their weapons and fled, enabling IS militants to take control of parts of Iraq's northern and western regions. Endit