Iraq oilfield shut down after mortar attack

A mortar attack started a huge fire tonight at an oil facility near Kirkuk, site of some of Iraq’s richest crude deposits, an official at North Oil has reported.

The official said two mortar rounds hit a pipeline filtering facility 25 kilometres (15 miles) northwest of Kirkuk at 6:30pm, shutting down the flow of crude to the massive Beiji refinery to the southwest.