Saboteurs hit Iraq oil industry in new threat to stability
"There were two sabotage cases. We are assessing the situation," he said.
Shippers in the region said export rates had fallen below 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) from about 1.7 million bpd. Some later said exports from Basra were at a complete halt. An Iraqi industry official said repairs could take seven to 10 days.
Iraqi leaders are desperate to calm a wave of bombings, assassinations and sabotage by shadowy insurgents trying to prove the new interim government cannot rule effectively after the US-led occupation formally ends on June 30.
A suicide car bomber killed 13 people, including five foreign contractors, in Baghdad on Monday, a day after 12 Iraqis died in another suicide attack near a US-Iraqi base.
The Basra pipeline sabotage will resurrect concerns about supplies from Iraq's Gulf ports, which until May had operated largely undisturbed since postwar exports resumed last summer.
Basra and a much smaller terminal at nearby Khor al-Amaya are Iraq's only regularly operating outlets.
Its 800,000 bpd northern pipeline to Turkey has pumped sporadically this year due to sabotage. It has been idle for the past two weeks.
Mr Allawi said this month foreign militants were involved in the repeated attacks on Iraq's oil infrastructure.
Basra, in the mainly Shi'ite south, has stayed relatively calm since radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr launched a revolt against occupation troops in early April.
Most fighting was in the holy cities of Najaf and Kerbala further north, where Sadr's Mehdi Army militia agreed a truce this month under pressure from Shi'ite religious leaders.
Iraqi President Ghazi Ajil al-Yawar said Mr Sadr could take part in Iraqi politics after June 30, in the clearest sign yet that Iraq's new leaders have no faith in the confrontational US approach to a man the military had once vowed to "kill or capture".
Mr Sadr last week gave the interim government conditional approval and said he planned to set up a political party that could contest national elections due to be held by January.
Meanwhile, dozens of Iraqis yesterday accused Fallujah police of handing over Shi'ite truck drivers to Sunni extremists who slaughtered them after they sought refuge at a police station.
The anger erupted at a funeral service in Firdous Square for six Shi'ite drivers whose bodies were found at a morgue near the city.
Mourners said the men were delivering a load of tents to the Fallujah Brigade, a force that co-operates with the US military in the restive city, 40 miles from the capital, Baghdad.
On their way back to Baghdad, the drivers were stopped by armed men who identified themselves as mujahedeen fighters who battled Marines to a standstill in April.
The six drivers escaped and sought refuge in a police station, the mourners said. However, they were handed over to a hard-line Sunni cleric because they were Shi'ites, the mourners said.
They were killed after the men who were holding them, one of them a Syrian, demanded €2,500 a head, the mourners said. The families could not afford the ransom. A 12-year-old boy, Mohammed Khudeir, said he was among those allegedly handed over by the police. But the cleric and his followers let him go, apparently because of his age.
"We tried to seek police protection, but the policemen handed us over," Khudeir said. His brother and uncle were killed by the insurgents, he said.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
