Water-main sabotage leaves Iraqi capital dry
Saboteurs blew up a water main in northern Baghdad, forcing engineers to cut off water to the capital and raising new fears that rebels were hitting Iraq’s infrastructure to slow its recovery.
The water-main bombing came yesterday as two oil fires raged out of control along an oil pipeline to Turkey, halting exports just days after they started. The first blaze appeared to be sabotage, a coalition spokesman said.
In new violence, a mortar attack on a Baghdad prison being used by the United States killed six Iraqis. Hours later, a cameraman for the Reuters news agency was mistakenly shot dead by US soldiers while filming outside the prison.
A new group of resistance fighters has said it will target the US-led occupation whether or not it helps rebuild the country.
Yesterday’s explosion in northern Baghdad blew a hole in a 5ft-diameter water main, flooding streets. People waded through chest-high water in some areas. Witnesses said two men on a motorbike left a bag of explosives and detonated it minutes later.
“It was an act of sabotage,” said Majid Noufel, a Baghdad water company engineer. “We’ve had to stop pumping water to the whole city so we can fix the damage.”
Residents, finding their taps dry, rushed to buy bottled water but many stores ran out.
“I couldn’t find any water to wash the clothes,” lamented housewife Amira Ali, 46. “The next few days we’re really going to suffer.”
A new group of resistance fighters, the Iraqi National Islamic Resistance Movement, said in a video aired on the Al-Jazeera television network that they would fight the occupying troops even if the US-led coalition helped Iraq recover from war.
“This resistance is not a reaction to the American provocations against the Iraqi people or to the shortage of services, as some analysts believe ... but to kick out the occupiers as a matter of principle,” a man read from a statement.
He sat with several other men holding grenade launchers and Kalashnikov automatic rifles. All had their faces covered with chequered headscarves.
Meanwhile, further north, two blazes a few miles apart raged out of control along the 600-mile pipeline exporting Iraq’s oil to Turkey.
The first fire began on Friday, only two days after oil exports to Turkey resumed, and the second started on Saturday night. The fires were 125 miles north east of Baghdad.
Coalition spokesman Charles Heatly said the first blaze appeared to be sabotage. Police commander Brig Gen Ahmed Ibrahim vowed to pursue “a group of conspirators who received money from a particular party” to blow up the pipeline.
Military spokesman Col. Guy Shields said it would take up to two weeks to fix the pipeline.
Iraq has the world’s second-largest proven crude reserves, at 112 billion barrels, but its pipelines, pumping stations and oil reservoirs are dilapidated after more than a decade of neglect. Northern Iraq, site of the giant Kirkuk oil fields, accounts for 40% of Iraq’s oil production.
