Drone strike at Iraq’s Khor Mor gasfield disrupts power across Kurdish region
A fire following a drone attack halted gas supplies to several cities’ power plants, leaving more than 70 percent of Iraq’s Kurdish region without electricity.
By Khalid Khalil ·
A drone attack on the Khor Mor gasfield in northern Iraq on Sunday night caused a fire and widespread electricity outages in the country’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region, Iraqi and Kurdish officials said. More than 70 percent of the region was left without power after the strike disrupted gas supplies used to generate electricity.
Responsibility for the attack remained unclear. It was also not known whether the strike was connected to the United States and Israel’s war on Iran. The incident occurred amid heightened tensions in the region and followed another drone strike on the same facility last year, for which no group claimed responsibility.
Footage showing smoke and flames rising from the vicinity of the gasfield in Sulaimaniyah governorate was verified by Sanad, Al Jazeera’s fact-checking agency. Reporting from Baghdad, Al Jazeera correspondent Peter Smith cited security sources who said a drone carrying explosives had struck the Khor Mor gas storage facility.
Omid Ahmed, a spokesperson for the Kurdistan Regional Government’s Ministry of Electricity, said the attack had halted gas deliveries to power plants serving Erbil, Sulaimaniyah, Bazian, Chamchamal and Duhok. His account of the disruption was carried by the official Iraqi News Agency, known as INA.
Ahmed said the loss of gas supplies had taken between 2,500 and 2,800 megawatts of electricity generation off the grid. Separately, the security sources cited by Smith put the reduction in the energy grid’s capacity at between 70 and 80 percent following the strike on the storage facility.
The electricity ministry planned to use hydroelectric stations and other plants capable of operating on alternative fuel to supply essential services, Ahmed said. Hospitals and water treatment plants were among the critical facilities that the ministry would provide with electricity through those sources while gas supplies were suspended.
Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi said an initial assessment indicated that the attack had caused no casualties, according to INA. That preliminary finding came as officials described the fire at the facility and the resulting interruption to electricity generation across the Kurdish region.
Al-Zaidi also ordered the formation of a joint investigative committee involving the relevant authorities in the Kurdish region, INA reported. The committee was tasked with examining the circumstances of the attack, with responsibility for the strike still undetermined.
