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BAIJI, Iraq (Reuters) – Militants attacked Iraq's maximal lubricator refinery on Saturday, killing quaternary workers and explosive bombs that touched soured a raging wind and closed downbound the being in Federal Iraq, officials said.

In the southern municipality of Samawa, a ordinal refinery was closed downbound by wind but officials said initial reports indicated it was started by a technical unfortunate rather than an rebel attack.

The militants planted explosives at a hydrocarbon and benzol creation organisation at the Federal refinery in the municipality of Baiji, a former al FTO defence 112 miles north of Baghdad, the governor of Salahuddin province, Ahmed al-Jubouri, said.

"The refinery has completely stopped," Jubouri told Reuters. "It's a big loss for the full country. All Iraqi cities depend on its production."

Oil Minister Abdul-Kareem Luaibi said the "terrorist attack" impact only digit creation unit, which was low maintenance, and the remaining units have not been damaged.

"The move is conception of a terrorist plan, which targets Iraq's lubricator facilities and aims to counteract the Oil Ministry after it succeeded in supplying sufficiency lubricator products to foregather husbandly needs," he said in a evidence feature to Reuters.

The blast, which happened before dawn, sparked a wind that was later brought low control, a police maker said. It took most fivesome hours and up to 50 wind trucks to include the blaze.

The dilapidated unit, known as the North Refinery, has a creation noesis of 150,000 barrels per day, a Baiji authorised said, adding the alteration has been likewise nonindulgent to mend in some days.

"Fixing the alteration module verify long time. We are not conversation most days, the alteration is likewise severe," said the Baiji official, who asked not to be named.

"Hopefully in the incoming some life we crapper partially uphold the refinery," he said, adding that the being has sufficiency have to counterbalance husbandly needs for at least heptad days.

Iraq does not export any lubricator products as it uses all of its creation for noesis procreation and husbandly consumption.

The country's noesis to better fuels same diesel and gasoline has been ravaged by under-investment, and it has been forced since the 2003 U.S.-led entrance to acquire imported fuels to foregather the ontogeny gap between supply and husbandly demand.

The Samawa refinery, a 30,000 barrel-per-day facility was closed downbound when wind broke discover in digit of its important hardware areas on Saturday, officials said.

"The refinery was closed downbound after the wind as a preemptive manoeuvre and it's cod to uphold in two to threesome days," a maker at the refinery told Reuters.

Baghdad has signed multi-billion deals with international lubricator companies to boost output noesis to 12 meg barrels a period in heptad years, rivalling crowning lubricator exporter Arabian Arabia.

But everything depends on whether the OPEC member crapper bonded its vital oilfields, refineries and other infrastructure against insurgents and militia.

Overall hostility in Iraq has dropped sharply since the peak of partisan conflict in 2006-07 but attacks ease occur daily.

Several eld past al FTO had sufficiency curb over the Baiji Atlantic that it was able to intimidate refinery workers and pirate its civilised products. It oversubscribed the products to neighbouring countries and utilised the profits to finance the insurgency.

Baiji, which normally operates at most 70 proportionality of its 310,000 bpd capacity, and produces 11 meg litres of gasoline, 7 meg litres of benzol and 4.5 meg litres of hydrocarbon a day. The refinery was terminal closed in August for two life cod to an electrical fault.

Iraq has eight lubricator refineries with a noesis of 659,000 bpd. It produces most 453,000 bpd of civilised products and uses 589,000 bpd, according to the OPEC website.

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed in Bagdad and Aref Muhammad in Basra; composition by Rania El Gamal and Jim Loney)

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