Iranian drones strike Kuwait's Mina al-Ahmadi oil refinery, fire reported

Iranian drones struck Kuwait's Mina al-Ahmadi oil refinery on Friday, sparking fires at the facility.

 

The state-run Kuwait Petroleum Corp. issued a statement on the attack and said firefighters were working to control the blazes.

 

There were no injuries reported, the company said.

 

Kuwait operates three oil refineries. Mina al-Ahmadi has come under attack multiple times in the war.

 

Refineries are key to Kuwait's oil production because, without them, oil wells would have to be shut down for lack of a destination for the oil.

 

Restarting refineries is extremely time-consuming for safety reasons, and those wells would remain largely inactive until refineries are back online. 

 

 

Furthermore, Kuwait said an Iranian attack damaged a desalination plant. The attack came after an oil refinery was hit by drones on Friday morning.

 

Kuwait said without elaborating that the attack on the desalination plant caused "material damage to some of the plant's components."

 

Desalination provides the majority of the water for the Gulf Arab states and Iran, drawing the salty waters of the Persian Gulf into drinking water for the desert region.

 

About 90 per cent of drinking water in Kuwait comes from desalination.

 

Desalination plants have become a major target in the war, with Iran initially accusing the US and Israel of striking one before beginning to target them in the Gulf Arab states. Those states view attacks on desalination plants as a threat to their very livelihoods.