ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Thick smoke from massive fires in northern Iraq – from oil wells set alight by retreating Islamic State (ISIS) forces and tracked by a NASA satellite – are reminiscent of the devastating oil blazes in Kuwait during the Gulf War, according to NASA’s Earth Observatory.
Images acquired on Aug. 17, by the Landsat 8 satellite, show “dense smoke plumes roughly 50 kilometers south of Mosul,” the Earth Observatory said on its website.
“There appear to be multiple sources of fire, most likely oil wells from the Qayyara oil field,” it added.
“The current smoke event recalls fires in neighboring Kuwait during the 1990s Persian Gulf War. Iraqi troops ignited more than 700 oil wells during that conflict,” according to the website.
It quoted Ronald Ferek of the U.S. Office of Naval Research as saying that the Kuwait fires “consumed roughly 4.6 million barrels of oil a day.”
“Like the current fires in Iraq, many of Kuwait’s fires produced thick, dark smoke,” said Ralph Kahn, an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
Iraqi firefighters have been battling the huge fires at oil wells in Qayyara, which was recaptured early last week from ISIS by the Iraqi Army. Fire teams from different parts of Iraq have been called in to try and control the blaze, which has made life nearly impossible for the residents of the newly-liberated town.
As a dense cloud of smoke hangs over the town, a thick sludge of burning crude has been meandering through some neighborhoods. Last week, firefighters evacuated at least one neighborhood where homes were destroyed by the fire.
Firefighters said they were trying to find the source of the fire in order to bring the blaze under control.
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