ANKARA, July 25 (AFP) - Dozens of fire fighters on Sunday managed to bring under control a fire at an oil refinery in southern Turkey after hours of battling the flames, the refinery said in a statement.
Nobody was injured in the blaze which began in a storage tank containing 9,000 tons of naphtha at the ATAS refinery in the province of Mersin on the Mediterranean coast, said the statement which was carried by the Anatolia news agency.
It said the fire was brought under control through rapid intervention.
"The naphtha left inside the tank will be allowed to burn out in a controlled manner while cooling-off work continues," the statement said.
It said the cause of the fire remained unclear and would be determined after a detailed investigation.
Local officials were earlier forced to call in fire fighters from nearby provinces, evacuate the lodgings inside the refinery complex and move tankers to a safe distance, Anatolia said.
Naphtha, a volatile petroleum distillate, is an intermediate product between gasoline and benzine and is used as a solvent or fuel.