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ISIS militants have set fire to oil wells in the Ajil field east of the city of Tikrit to try to hinder aerial attacks aimed at driving them from the oilfield, a witness and military source said, Reuters reported.

Black smoke could be seen rising from oil field since Wednesday afternoon, said the witness, who accompanied Iraqi militia and soldiers as they advanced on Tikrit from the east.

Before ISIS took over the field in June it produced 25,000 barrels per day of crude that were shipped to the Kirkuk refinery, as well as 150 million cubic feet of gas per day piped to the government-controlled Kirkuk power station.

An engineer at the site told Reuters last July that ISIS fighters were pumping lower volumes of oil from Ajil, fearing that their primitive extraction techniques could ignite the gas.

Bombing in August damaged the Ajil field's control room, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.