Blast Occurs On Day Iraqi Oil Exports Were to Resume

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, June 23, 2003

Blast Occurs On Day Iraqi Oil Exports Were to Resume

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An oil pipeline exploded and caught fire Sunday west of Baghdad, the U.S. military said, and flames were seen reaching high into the sky. Meanwhile, two U.S. soldiers were wounded Saturday when their Humvee vehicle struck a landmine in the the same area.

1st LT. Mary Pervez, a U.S. military spokeswoman in Baghdad, said that the cause of the explosion near the town of Hit, 150 kilometers (95 miles) west of Baghdad, was being investigated.

There were no U.S. casualties, she said.

No other details were immediately available.

The explosion occurred on the same day Iraq was set to restart its first postwar oil exports.

Tankers in recent days have been loading crude for export at storage facilities in the Turkish oil terminal Ceyhan.

Iraq's oil pipeline from the northern fields of Kirkuk to Turkey's Ceyhan are expected to start pumping Sunday once the tankers start taking on crude, Mohammed Al-Jibouri, the head of Iraq's State Oil Marketing Organization, or SOMO, told Dow Jones Newswires.

The pipeline stopped pumping during the U.S.-led war on Iraq, when shipping was stopped and the Ceyhan storage tanks filled to their capacity of 8 million barrels.

"Hopefully on Sunday when exports begin we will start pumping oil again," al-Jibouri said in an interview last week.

Full restart of Iraq's oil exports, around 2 million barrels a day before the war, have been delayed due to damage caused by saboteurs.

Meantime, two U.S. soldiers were injured when their Humvee stuck a landmine in the same region, a U.S. military spokesman said Sunday.

He said the blast had occurred on Saturday afternoon. The soldiers from the 3rd Armoured Cavalry had been evacuated for medical treatment. The spokesman had no word on their condition.

U.S. forces have frequently come under attack in the mainly Sunni Muslim towns north and west of Baghdad. Eighteen American soldiers have been killed in hostile action since the United States declared major combat over in Iraq on May 1.

RAID NETS INTELLIGENCE

On Saturday, U.S. soldiers, acting on a tip, seized code equipment and piles of top secret Iraqi intelligence documents in a raid on a community center.

The find, including references to a nuclear program, is being sent to senior intelligence analysts to look for information on Iraq's banned weapons programs.

Americans also are mounting a "very aggressive effort" to follow up on information from a captured top aide to Saddam that the former Iraqi president is alive, said Sen. Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The Iraqi intelligence haul came on the sixth day of a nationwide sweep to seize weapons and insurgents. So far, the military has conducted 90 raids and netted 540 suspects, a coalition spokesman said. No figure was given on how many had been released.

"It's potentially significant," said Capt. Ryan McWilliams, an intelligence officer with the Army's 1st Armored Division, who examined the documents. He said there were "potentially some pretty strong documents regarding the intelligence service."

U.S. forces have been combing Iraq for clues to the country's banned nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs. The searches have so far failed to prove that Iraq harbored unconventional weapons U.S. President Bush cited as the justification for war.

BUSH DEFENDS WMD CLAIMS

In his weekly radio address Saturday, Bush defended initial administration claims about the existence of the weapons but did not promise they will be found, as he had on other occasions until recently. The president said documents and suspected weapons sites were looted and burned "in the regime's final days."

"We are determined to discover the true extent of Saddam Hussein's weapons programs, no matter how long it takes," Bush said.

The search for Saddam and his sons also has been fruitless so far.

On Saturday, The Washington Post and The New York Times reported that Saddam's top aide, captured Monday, has told U.S. interrogators that the deposed leader and his two sons survived the war and were hiding north of Baghdad.

The claim, attributed to Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti, could not be verified. The White House refused comment.

Sen. Roberts, R-Kan., confirmed on Saturday that Mahmud had told U.S. interrogators, "There is every likelihood that Saddam is alive."

"We have now mounted a very aggressive effort to follow up on what he has told, basically, his captors," Roberts said at a news conference in Topeka, Kan. "If he is alive - and there's still a lot of speculation - I think he will be found," he added.

Roberts said reports that Saddam is alive give his supporters "credibility in their own minds" and could be fueling anti-American attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq.

"That's why they're staging this, basically, guerrilla war against our forces, and we're suffering casualties," Roberts said.

INFORMANTS GAVE TIPS

Saturday's raid in Baghdad's Azamiyah district nabbed dozens of military radios, cryptography equipment and mapmaking plotters. Most equipment appeared to be old. It included equipment made by U.S. and European companies like Motorola and Thompson.

McWilliams said informants told him Iraqi intelligence officials stashed the goods there in the last days of Saddam's regime. He added that the stash would be handed over to intelligence analysts at the division's headquarters at Baghdad International Airport to see if they relate to banned weapons programs.

Soldiers with flashlights examined documents strewn across the floor of two rooms above a funeral parlor. An Arabic interpreter pointed out Top Secret and Personal markings.

One document, dated Feb. 7, 1998, appeared to be a manifest for secure communications equipment. The memo, sent from the National Security Council of Iraq, was addressed to the Iraqi Nuclear Organization, with a carbon to the Mukhabarat, the secret intelligence service.

IRAQI GROUP VOWS TO KILL

Meanwhile, an Iraqi group vowed on Saturday to target U.S. soldiers until they leave Iraq.

"We will send them back the bodies of their soldiers one after another in retaliation for the terrorist and provocative actions that their dirty, barbarous forces have carried out," said a masked man on a videotape received by Lebanon's LBC television. There was no way to verify its authenticity.

Saying he was speaking for the Iraqi National Front of Fedayeen - literally "those who sacrifice themselves" - the man promised more attacks on U.S. forces.

He appeared with his face covered in a checked red-and-white headscarf as he read a written statement. Three masked men sat behind him with rocket-propelled grenades.

The man denied the group had "any contact, link or relationship with the former regime" in Iraq.

In a message to Bush and his "criminal henchmen," he said: "If they want their soldiers to be safe, they must leave our pure land."

GUNNERS BRANCH OUT

Saturday's search - a job usually handled by U.S. intelligence operatives - fell to the Gunners, a field artillery regiment, used to firing cannons in conventional battles.

Since June 15, the Gunners have been one of the busiest U.S. units in Baghdad, seizing more than 60 suspects along with weapons, propaganda leaflets and cash.

The Gunners get raiding pointers, intelligence and interrogation help from U.S. Special Forces soldiers, in their patrols of what many consider Baghdad's most anti-American sector.

The mainly Sunni Muslim Azamiyah district has been the site of sophisticated ambushes on U.S. forces. The last time Saddam was seen in public - in the war's waning days - was in Azamiyah, and the neighborhood put up some of the toughest resistance to the U.S. invasion.

"It's just infested with guys who think at the highest level," said Col. Bill Rabena, the Gunners' commander. "These guys are organized. It's not just a bunch of thugs with RPGs," or rocket-propelled grenades.

To help maintain security in postwar Iraq, U.S. officials will soon announce the creation of a new Iraqi army that will be open to soldiers of the former regime, the coalition spokesman said.

"It's going to be an army, not a secret police. It's going to be professional, not political. ... And it will be open to former members of the Iraqi military," he said.

After Saddam's ouster, the entire Iraqi military was dismissed. Iraqi police officials say that former soldiers may be behind some attacks on U.S. forces, and disgruntled ex-officers have been staging demonstrations demanding their salaries.

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