By Walid Shoebat

The ISIS news Agency Amaq just published on May 24, 2015 a video showing the extensive fire which consumed the entire refinery of Baiji, the largest in all Iraq, as the battles took place after conducting offensive car bombs on the last Iraqi army stationed at the Baiji refinery:

Iraqi forces and the militias are still bombing with rockets and artillery shells trying to progress toward the refinery to take control of whats left of it still failing to break into the Baiji refinery which, as we see the great catastrophe, is all up in smoke.

Iraqi troops reportedly seized control of a strategic area in Baiji on Friday, clearing a route into the city’s oil refinery, where fighting with Islamic State (IS) militants has raged for the last two months.

US Marine Brig. Gen. Thomas D. Weidley said in a statement Friday that Iraqi forces had made “steady, measured progress in regaining some of the areas leading to the Baiji oil refinery.”

Weidley, chief of staff for Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve, the international campaign against IS, said the militants retaliated against the Iraqi advance with “IEDs [improvised explosive devices], suicide vehicle borne IEDs, as well as heavy weapon and rocket fire attacks.”

Iraq’s Interior Ministry said government forces were able to “severely” attack IS members at the oil refinery, and that they had cleared the main road from the city to the refinery, according to Rudaw, a Kurdish news agency.

The video released today by Aamaq News Agency, an activist group that supports IS, shows how badly this refinery was completely engulfed in flames with huge plumes of black smoke billowing into the night sky. Daylight footage in the same video shows fires smoldering among tangled piles of rubble.