Syria announces foiling of terrorist plot targeting Homs oil refinery

Syrian authorities announced the foiling of a terrorist plot targeting the Homs oil refinery, without revealing details or the party behind it. The official SANA news agency quoted an intelligence source confirming the plot was thwarted, after correcting a previous report that had indicated the targeting of the Baniyas refinery.

Syrian authorities announced on Sunday the foiling of a terrorist plot targeting the Homs oil refinery, without disclosing details of the plot or the party behind it. The official Syrian news agency SANA quoted a source in the General Intelligence as saying that the plot was thwarted, noting in an initial report that the plot was targeting the Baniyas refinery in Tartous province, then issued a correction about 30 minutes later confirming that the target was the Homs refinery. The agency indicated that the Homs refinery plays an important role alongside the Baniyas refinery in securing petroleum products for the local market, and mentioned that in October last year, the '10' atmospheric distillation unit was rehabilitated with a design capacity of one million tons of crude oil annually. These developments come amid a series of sabotage incidents targeting energy facilities in the country, where the Syrian Petroleum Company announced on October 7 that an oil pipeline in the northeast of the country was subjected to a sabotage attack, the third of its kind within ten days.