Iraqi sheep, locals, environment suffer Islamic State oil fires

Images from NASA's Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 show dense smoke plumes roughly 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of Mosul, Iraq dated from May 29, 2016 (Top Left) to August 17, 2016 (Bottom Right). NASA/Handout via REUTERS

QAYYARA, Iraq (Reuters) - Shepherds herd blackened flocks through the Iraqi desert. Locals cough and wheeze under vast clouds of smoke, and NASA images show oil threatening to encroach on the Tigris River, a major water source.

Lit by Islamic State as they fled Iraqi forces in August, huge oil fires are still raging across northern Iraq, bringing a litany of problems in their wake.