Libya: Drone strikes fuel tank at Al-Zawiya refinery, causing severe fire - Sarmad
The National Oil Corporation (NOC) of Libya announced on Monday evening that a drone strike hit a fuel tank at the Zawiya refinery, causing a fire that Libyan authorities are attempting to contain.
The statement came after Al-Burayqa Company, Libya’s oil marketing firm, reported a fire in a gasoline storage tank at the Zawiya oil depot, “following its impact under circumstances whose causes remain unknown.”
In a statement posted on Facebook, the company added that “Tank 402-T was directly targeted, leading to a severe fire before the tank completely collapsed.” It noted that “firefighting and safety teams are doing everything possible to control the fire, mitigate its effects, and prevent its spread to other facilities and infrastructure.”
The company emphasized that “the tank contained a load of approximately 4.5 million liters of automotive gasoline, making the incident highly dangerous due to the direct threat it poses to the facility, adjacent oil installations, and surrounding areas.”
For his part, Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, head of the Government of National Unity, stressed during a meeting to discuss recent security developments the need to deal firmly with “any encroachments or acts that threaten security or compromise vital installations and facilities.”
The NOC Board of Directors declared a state of maximum emergency in the area due to the severity and recurrence of these attacks, calling on competent authorities to intervene urgently and immediately, and to launch a comprehensive investigation into the circumstances and background of these attacks. It urged efforts to identify and apprehend the perpetrators and those behind them, and to refer them to the judiciary to receive deterrent punishment in accordance with the law.
The Board of Directors stressed that “protecting oil installations and their workers, and ensuring the continuity of production, storage, and distribution operations, is a shared national responsibility, and that any attack on these installations constitutes a direct threat to the country’s security and safety, as well as to the people’s resources.”
The Board also strongly condemned the repeated attacks targeting assets and oil installations in the city of Zawiya, which have escalated over recent days in a manner that seriously threatens the safety of the facilities and their workers, as well as the potential risks to surrounding areas and infrastructure.
Earlier, on Saturday, the Libyan Zawiya Refining Company announced that a drone had collided with a naphtha tank at the Zawiya refinery, causing an explosion that resulted in two holes in the tank’s wall.
In a statement, the company clarified that the situation had been contained and the leak stopped, noting that no fires or casualties had occurred at the site.
