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

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

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

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

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

"The move is part of a terrorist plan, which targets Iraq's lubricator facilities and aims to undermine the Oil Ministry after it succeeded in supplying enough lubricator products to foregather husbandly needs," he said in a statement read to Reuters.

The blast, which happened before dawn, sparked a wind that was after brought low control, a police maker said. It took most fivesome hours and up to 50 wind trucks to contain 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 too nonindulgent to fix in some days.

"Fixing the alteration will take daylong time. We are not conversation most days, the alteration is too severe," said the Baiji official, who asked not to be named.

"Hopefully in the next some life we crapper partially uphold the refinery," he said, adding that the plant has enough have to cover husbandly needs for at least heptad days.

Iraq does not goods some lubricator products as it uses every of its creation for noesis procreation and husbandly consumption.

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

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

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

Baghdad has subscribed multi-billion deals with international lubricator companies to increase production noesis to 12 meg barrels a period in heptad years, rivalling top lubricator exporter Arabian Arabia.

But everything depends on whether the OPEC member crapper bonded its alive oilfields, refineries and another stock against insurgents and militia.

Overall hostility in Irak has dropped sharply since the extreme of sectarian conflict in 2006-07 but attacks ease become daily.

Several years past al FTO had enough curb over the Baiji Atlantic that it was able to discourage refinery workers and pirate its civilised products. It sold the products to neighbouring countries and utilised the profits to direction the insurgency.

Baiji, which ordinarily 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 last closed in August for digit life cod to an electrical fault.

Iraq has octad 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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