Iraqi pipeline blaze blamed on sabotage

An oil pipeline near the northern city of Kirkuk was on fire today and local officials said the blaze may have been caused by sabotage. In Mosul, US troops opened fire after an explosion near a military convoy, witnesses said.

Details about the fire, on a subsidiary line linking the Janbur oil fields near Kirkuk with the main pipeline in the region, were sketchy, said Adel al-Qazzaz, manager of the Northern Oil Company. But he said he believed sabotage was to blame.

Insurgents have repeatedly targeted pipelines linking the fields around Kirkuk with a refinery at Bayji, about 50 miles to the southwest, and with Turkey to the north.

Concerns that the insurgency was spreading northward from its original stronghold in the so-called Sunni Triangle were reinforced today when an explosion near a US military convoy in Mosul, 250 miles north of Baghdad, damaged a Humvee.

“I heard a strong explosion saw the Americans randomly shooting in all directions,” said Omar Hamed, a witness.

There was no immediate comment from the US military about possible casualties.

Gunmen in Mosul yesterday shot two American soldiers driving through the city centre, sending their vehicle crashing into a wall. About a dozen swarming teenagers dragged the men out of the wreckage and beat them with concrete blocks, the witnesses said.

“One of the soldiers was shot under the chin and the bullet came out of his head. I saw the hole in his helmet. The other was shot in the throat,” said Bahaa Jassim, a witness.

Some people looted the vehicle of weapons, CDs and a backpack, Jassim said.

The frenzy recalled the October 1993 scene in Somalia, when locals dragged the bodies of US Marines killed in fighting with warlords through the streets.

In Kirkuk, 150 miles north of Baghdad, three American civilian contractors from the US firm Kellogg Brown & Root were injured yesterday when a bomb exploded at an oil compound.

KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton, also has a significant presence at Baghdad’s Palestine Hotel, which was rocketed by insurgents on Friday, wounding one civilian.

In Baqouba, just north of Baghdad, insurgents detonated a roadside bomb as a 4th Infantry Division convoy passed, killing one soldier and wounding two others, the military said.

And gunmen killed the Iraqi police chief of Latifiyah, 20 miles south of Baghdad, and his bodyguard and driver, American and Iraqi officials said. No further details were released.

Meanwhile, the US-led coalition said it had grounded commercial flights after the military confirmed that a missile struck a DHL cargo plane that landed on Saturday at Baghdad International Airport with its wing aflame.

The plane was the first civilian airliner hit by insurgents, who have shot down several military helicopters with shoulder-fired rockets. DHL and Royal Jordanian, the only commercial passenger airline flying into Baghdad, immediately suspended flights.