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Iraqi oil infrastructure targeted at Binny's command
 Iraq's key oil infrastructure suffered five attacks in 24 hours after a voice identified as Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden ordered followers to sabotage the west's key oil supplies. An oil ministry spokesman condemned the upsurge in "terrorist acts" which he says are depriving Iraqis of essential fuel and the country of desperately needed export revenues. There were two blasts on pipelines Saturday and three late Friday, all of them in restive Sunni Arab areas around the capital or in north-central Iraq, officials say.In the first of Saturday's attacks, saboteurs blew up a section of the pipeline feeding oil from the northern Kirkuk fields to the distribution hub of Baiji, an oil facilities protection officer says. The section near Fatha, 85 kilometres west of the oil city of Kirkuk, had already been hit on Friday, virtually eliminating its flow. An hour later a second blast hit the pipeline linking Baiji with Baghdad's Daura refinery, network director Majid Mamnum says. The section breached was at Dijla, 20 kilometres north of the insurgent stronghold of Samarra. On Friday evening, saboteurs hit another pipeline supplying crude from the southern Basra fields to the Daura refinery, oil ministry spokesman Jihad Assem says. "A massive fire resulted, halting the flow of oil to Daura," he said, adding that the blast struck near the town of Yusufiyah in the so-called 'triangle of death' just south of the capital. "It stopped the output of refined products which had only just resumed after a 17-day break resulting from previous sabotage. "The same evening, near Baiji, saboteurs struck another pipeline supplying refined products from the refinery there to storage reservoirs around Baghdad." That attack was claimed by an Islamic militant group loyal to bin Laden, the Al Qaeda Organisation of Mesopotamia, in a leaflet distributed in Baiji. The leaflet said sabotage had been carried out in response to Thursday's Internet message from the Al Qaeda "supreme commander". "These terrorist acts, which coincide with the threats from bin Laden, are aimed at depriving ordinary people of fuel so that the crisis worsens," the oil ministry spokesman said. "They are costing Iraqis hundreds of millions of dollars." Posted by: Dan Darling 2004-12-19 |
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