Iraqi oil exports cut after insurgents target pipeline

INSURGENTS have attacked an Iraqi oil pipeline, setting off a huge blaze and slashing the country’s daily oil exports by around 25%.

Firecrews are still attempting to tackle the blaze, but Jabber Luyaibi, director general of Iraq's Southern Oil Company, said engineers had managed to divert oil to a second pipeline.

However, an official for the State Oil Marketing Pipeline said that the alternative pipeline was too small to handle the additional flow and that, as a result, Iraq's petroleum exports fell by 25% to 1.2 million barrels a day.

Iraq has the world's second-largest proven petroleum reserves after Saudi Arabia and its return to world oil markets is seen as the key to reviving the economy after decades of war and misrule by Saddam Hussein's ousted regime.

Meanwhile, US tanks and helicopters destroyed radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's headquarters in Baghdad's Sadr City.

US officials said 35 Iraqis were killed before fighting ended. Later, a large but distant explosion was heard in central Baghdad, and Al Jazeera television reported renewed clashes in Sadr City.

In a statement broadcast by Lebanon's Al Manar television, the "political forces of Sadr City" appealed to US authorities to stop attacks on the district and to "peacefully solve this conflict without violence, terrorism and cruelty."

However, an al-Sadr aide vowed to step up the campaign against the US-led occupation.

"The second phase of the fight has not been born yet," Hossam al-Husseini, said in the southern city of Najaf, where the cleric has taken refuge. "This is a struggle for independence. It will end when the Americans leave Iraq."

Elsewhere, US Marines entered the restive city of Fallujah for the first time since a bloody, three-week siege ended last month. The Marines, accompanied by Iraqi forces, remained in the city for about an hour.

Three more US soldiers have died in Iraq two from hostile fire and one in a traffic accident.

The Dutch Ministry of Defence also confirmed that a Dutch soldier was killed and another wounded in an attack in the southern city of Samawah.

They were the first casualties among the 1,300 Dutch troops in Iraq.