Weekend Attacks Threaten Iraq’s Recovery, U.S. Says

Two explosions and subsequent fires over the weekend severely damaged Iraq’s main northern oil pipeline and effectively halted oil exports, just as workers were prepared to pump huge volumes of crude to world markets for the first time in five months. The damaged Kirkuk-Turkey pipeline carries oil from the giant oilfields near the northern Iraqi city, which accounts for 40 percent of Iraq’s oil production, to a Turkish terminal at Ceyhan.

U.S. officials expect the pipeline to remain closed for repairs over the next month.

U.S. administrator of Iraq Paul Bremer warned that continuing sabotage to Iraq’s infrastructure would impair the recovery of Iraq’s battered economy.

The damage from the recent attacks to the oil pipelines would cost Iraq some $7 million a day in lost revenue and “hurt the process of reconstruction,” Bremer told a meeting of a committee coordinating foreign aid for Iraq.

“The irony is that Iraq is a rich country that is temporarily poor,” Bremer added.

The first fire apparently broke out Friday along the pipeline near Baiji, a town north of Tikrit, the ancestral home of deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. U.S. military and Iraqi officials said the explosion was the result of a bomb attack, news agencies reported.

“We believe at this stage it was an explosive device planted on the pipeline,” U.S.-appointed interim oil minister in Iraq, Thamir Ghadban, said.

Ghadban acknowledged serious flaws in the security of Iraq’s oil infrastructure.

“In the past regime, we had the oil police, the army and the cooperation of the tribes, as well as what we call internal security,” Ghadban was quoted as telling the Agence France-Presse news agency. “Now all this has disappeared. There is a void in security,” the Iraqi oil official added.

A second fire reportedly ignited along the same pipeline late Saturday. U.S. officials initially blamed the blaze on sabotage, but on Monday suggested it could be the result of an oil leak.

U.S. Army engineers on Monday continued to battle the two fires.

Coalition officials in Baghdad on Monday also announced they recently contracted a private firm to hire 6,500 guards to watch over Iraq’s energy facilities, The New York Times reported.

Meanwhile, in southern Iraq, widespread looting of electricity cables caused chronic power failures over the weekend. Apparent sabotage attacks on the area’s pipelines and export terminals also contributed to power shortages and cut in half oil export rates from the southern port of Mina al-Bakr, U.S. military officials told news agencies.

During the weekend, an attack one of Baghdad’s large water mains effectively cut off supplies to parts of the capital, leaving some 300,000 people without drinking water, as blistering summer temperatures reached 122 degrees Fahrenheit.

Baghdad engineers cautioned it would take eight hours to repair the broken water pipelines that flooded the main city roads. The sabotage of the water pipeline was the first attack on Baghdad’s water system, engineers said.

In another development, a mortar attack on a Baghdad prison killed six Iraqis and injured 59 others just before midnight Saturday. Three shells were fired into the Abu Ghraib prison compound, where prisoners — many suspected of involvement in the insurgency against U.S. forces or of being members of Saddam’s regime — were being held in tents, The New York Times reported.

Around midday Sunday, U.S. forces shot and killed an award-winning Reuters news agency cameraman who was filming outside the prison. Senior U.S. military officials said U.S. troops mistakenly believed camera award-winning video journalist Mazen Dana was pointing at them was a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

Reuters quoted a colleague who was working alongside Dana, soundman Nael al-Shyoukhi, as saying U.S. soldiers outside the prison knew who they were and what they were doing there. He said one U.S. soldier gave them permission to film an overview of the facility.

The 43-year-old Palestinian cameraman received the International Press Freedom Award in 2001 for his work in the West Bank city of Hebron.

Reuters Chief Executive Tom Glocer says he hopes there will be a full investigation into Dana’s death.