Insurgents attack Iraqi oil pipeline

INSURGENTS using explosives set fire to the main oil pipeline in northern Iraq yesterday.

The pipeline links an oil field in the city of Kirkuk to Iraq's largest oil refinery in Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad.

Firefighter Adil Mohammed said the explosion occurred at about 5am (2am Irish time) setting fire to the pipeline and several oil valves.

"The damage is 100%, and we've haven't been able to control the fire yet."

Iraq has the world's third-largest known oil reserves, but the industry has been crippled by several wars, sanctions during Saddam's rule and the anti-US insurgency. Oil production remains limited, curbed by decaying infrastructure and frequent militant attacks on pipelines and refineries.

The three soldiers killed on Wednesday were on combat patrol 50 miles north of Baghdad, when the roadside bomb exploded, the military said. A wounded soldier was transported to a Coalition Forces medical facility for treatment.

A soldier died from a non-hostile gunshot wound on Tuesday at a forward operating base near Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad. Military police said the incident was being investigated.

The fatalities raised to at least 1,987 the number of members of the US military who have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003.

Other violence in Iraq yesterday:

At 10 am local time militants in a car opened fire on civilians outside a food shop in southern Baghdad, killing two.

The militants then stopped, rushed into the store and gunned down a third Iraqi, police said.

At 11 am, a rocket hit a public school for students aged 12 to 15 in the western al-Mansour neighborhood of the capital, killing one child and wounding five, police said. A nearby shopkeeper also was killed.

At noon, a suicide car bomb exploded in front of a provincial government building in the city of Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. Three were killed and 14 wounded.

On Wednesday, Iraqi security officials announced the arrest in Baghdad of Saddam Hussein's nephew, Yasir Sabhawi Ibrahim, after Syrian authorities forced him to return to Iraq several days earlier.