Fresh wave of sabotage and violence takes toll on Iraq

IRAQ’S northern oil pipeline to Turkey will not reopen for at least two weeks, the US army said yesterday.

Saboteurs blew up part of the key export route, dealing a heavy blow to the country’s hopes of a speedy post-war recovery.

Meanwhile, attacks on the US-led forces occupying Iraq since they ousted Saddam Hussein continued, with a Danish soldier and two Iraqis killed in the south and two US soldiers wounded and another Iraqi killed in the north.

Meanwhile in Baghdad, six Iraqi detainees were killed and 59 others wounded late Saturday in a mortar attack on Abu Gharib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad, the US army said.

The capital was also hit by sabotage, as an attack on a water pipeline caused floods in parts of the city and deprived 300,000 people of running water, the International Committee of the Red Cross said.

The US army said that workers from the state-run Northern Oil Company were at the site of the sabotage to the oil pipeline, undertaking repairs that could last up to a month.

But an AFP photographer at the scene near Baiji, a town about 200 kilometres north of Baghdad which is a vital hub in the network of pipelines that criss-cross Iraq, said the flat desert landscape around the blaze was deserted.

The fire stretched several hundred metres along the pipeline, which is buried one metre beneath the surface. A huge black cloud of smoke rose up from the blaze.

“The damage to the pipeline means seven-million dollar losses every day,” said the US civil administrator for Iraq, Paul Bremer.

The US army said the fire had been contained by cutting the oil flow feeding it, but could not say when it would be extinguished.

The American-led coalition that now runs Iraq sees the oil industry as central to financing the hugely expensive task of rebuilding a nation shattered by the war and by years of economic sanctions.

Iraq, currently exporting 700,000 barrels per day from its southern oilfields around the port of Basra, has the world’s second-largest oil reserves.

But sabotage and looting have plagued the oil sector since Saddam was toppled in April, with damage to wells leaving just 150 of 700 in working order, officials have said.

Elsewhere on the ground, it was unclear how exactly the Danish soldier and the two Iraqis were killed in southern Iraq.

The British army, which controls the southern region, said the incident occurred in Al-Madinah, 50 kilometres north of Basra.

The Danish army command said from Copenhagen that gunfire had erupted as the soldier and his unit tried to examine a truck carrying several Iraqis on Saturday.

Apart from leaving two Iraqis dead, another was injured in the exchange, while Danish troops arrested a further six, the command said.

A defence ministry official in Copenhagen said the Danish soldier may have been accidentally shot by a member of his own unit.

The Dane was the first to be killed in Iraq since Denmark contributed 420 soldiers to help secure the region around Basra following the US-led war that ousted Saddam.

In Baghdad, six Iraqi detainees were reported killed and 59 others wounded after a mortar attack late on Saturday on Abu Gharib prison on the outskirts of the capital.

Three rounds hit the prison, the US army said, adding that the wounded detainees were evacuated to a nearby US military field hospitals and that the attack was under investigation.

North of the capital, an Iraqi was killed and two US soldiers wounded in separate attacks on coalition forces by suspected Saddam loyalists.