Kurdish region loses power after drone hits Khor Mor gasfield

A drone attack on the Khor Mor gasfield in northern Iraq on Sunday night left more than 70 percent of the Kurdish region without electricity. Iraqi and Kurdish officials said the strike caused a fire and disrupted the gas supplies needed to generate power across the semi-autonomous area.

Security sources told Al Jazeera correspondent Peter Smith that a drone carrying explosives hit the gas storage facility in Sulaimaniyah governorate. Footage showing smoke and flames rising from the site was verified by Sanad, Al Jazeera’s fact-checking agency. Responsibility for the attack remains unclear, and it is not yet known if the strike is connected to the ongoing war between the United States, Israel, and Iran.

Omid Ahmed, a spokesperson for the Kurdistan Regional Government’s Ministry of Electricity, stated that gas deliveries to power plants in Erbil, Sulaimaniyah, Bazian, Chamchamal, and Duhok have halted. He said the loss of gas took between 2,500 and 2,800 megawatts of generation capacity off the grid. Security sources cited a separate estimate that the strike reduced the energy grid’s capacity by 70 to 80 percent.

The ministry plans to use hydroelectric stations and other plants that run on alternative fuels to supply essential services while gas supplies are suspended. Ahmed said hospitals and water treatment plants are among the critical facilities that will receive electricity from these sources. This is the second drone strike on the Khor Mor facility in a year, with no group claiming responsibility for the previous incident either.

Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi said an initial assessment indicated that the attack caused no casualties. He ordered the formation of a joint investigative committee involving relevant authorities in the Kurdish region to examine the circumstances of the strike. The committee is tasked with determining what happened, as the source of the attack remains undetermined.