Iraq has asked the United States to stage air attacks on Sunni Muslim insurgents, a pan-Arab television service on Wednesday reported Iraq Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari as saying.
A news alert on the Al Arabiya news channel quoted Zebari as saying: "We request the United States to launch air strikes against militants."
Earlier, Iraq said that its armed forces have regained full control over the Baiji oil refinery, north of Baghdad, following an attack by radical Sunni militants.
The fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have routed Baghdad's army and seized main cities across the north of the country in the past week, threatening to dismember Iraq and unleash all-out sectarian warfare with no regard for national borders.
The fighters battled their way into Baiji refinery on Wednesday after a morning of heavy fighting at the gates which have been defended by elite troops under siege for a week.
"We repelled today an attempt by Daesh (ISIL) to attack Baiji Refinery, thanks to God. We foiled the attack, killing 40 terrorists and destroying vehicles full of personnel, weapons, equipment and ammunition," an army spokesman, General Qassem Atta, told a news conference in Baghdad.
Atta confirmed the Baiji refinery, the biggest source of fuel for domestic consumption in Iraq, had now been taken back from the ISIL fighters.
Iraqi security sources and refinery employees said the fighters used machine-gun fire and mortars to attack the site.
One mortar hit a spare-parts warehouse and smoke billowed from the building, the sources said. On Tuesday (May 17), foreigners were evacuated from the refinery as security forces braced for an attack on the compound.
On another note, a group of Turkish construction workers were among some 60 people abducted by Islamist militants near the Iraqi city of Kirkuk, less than a week after dozens of other Turkish nationals were taken hostage in Mosul, according to a news report.
Militants from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) seized 15 Turkish workers who were building a hospital near the town of Dor, located between Selahaddin and Kirkuk, the Dogan News Agency said, citing a worker who escaped. It was not immediately clear when the abduction took place.
Those abducted also included workers from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Turkmenistan, Dogan reported.
ISIL insurgents kidnapped 31 Turkish truck drivers as they overran the northern city of Mosul last week during a lightning advance. They then seized the Turkish consulate in Mosul, holding another 49 people.
ISIL and other Sunni militants have swept through towns in the Tigris valley north of Baghdad in recent days.
Similarly, forty Indian construction workers have been kidnapped from the Iraqi city of Mosul, the Indian foreign ministry said on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Iraq Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki called for his country's tribes to renounce Sunni militants who have taken major cities in a week-long offensive."I call upon the tribes to renounce those who are killers and criminals who represent foreign agendas," he said in a televised speech.
International Positions
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he does not back sending any U.S. troops into the conflict in Iraq, which he described as a "civil war" ahead of a meeting with President Barack Obama about the escalating crisis.
"I do not support in any way putting our men and women in the midst of this civil war in Iraq. It is not in the national security interest of our country," Reid said in remarks opening the Senate's daily session.
Obama is considering military options to push back al Qaeda splinter group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which has swept the north of the country over the past week as the Shiite-led army has crumbled.
Meanwhile, British Prime Minister David Cameron said that Sunni Islamist insurgents fighting in Iraq were planning to attack Britain and that "ungoverned spaces" where militants thrived had to be shut down.
Cameron spoke out as Iran's president vowed to defend Shiite holy sites in Iraq, where Sunni militants battled their way into the biggest oil refinery in what is rapidly turning into a sectarian war across the frontiers of the Middle East.
Britain has ruled out any military involvement in Iraq, but has sent an "operational liaison and reconnaissance team" to Baghdad and is providing humanitarian aid. It has also pledged to crack down on Britons travelling to the region to fight alongside the insurgents.
But Cameron, who is chairing a meeting of Britain's National Security Council to discuss the subject later on Wednesday, said his country could not afford to stand on the sidelines.
REUTERS/AP
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