10 die in fresh Iraqi bomb blast
THE reign of terror continued in Iraq yesterday as insurgents took their battle to the doorsteps of the country's security personnel.
In an attack near a police building in Haditha, 200 kilometres from Baghdad, 10 people were killed with 30 others wounded.
On Tuesday, 11 people including an Iraqi governor, were killed in two separate bomb attacks. Forty people were also injured in the grenade attacks.
The victims of the fresh attack include three policemen. The Ministry of Health, which confirmed the incident, did not give a further breakdown of the casualty figure.
Besides the bomb attacks, crude oil smugglers are also adding to the many troubles the new Iraqi leadership are contending with.
The smugglers, on Wednesday drilled a 43-inch hole in an oil pipeline in the city of Basra, police said.
They, however, stated that the attempt did not affect the country's crude oil exports.
And as the deadline given United States (U.S.) led forces to free Iraqi prisoners expired on Wednesday, the fate of a Bulgarian held by Iraqi fighters could not immediately be ascertained.
One of the two Bulgarian truck drivers had been killed. Al Jazeera television said on Tuesday a video of his execution was too gruesome to air.
"We expect to receive the videotape with the execution of one of the Bulgarian hostages in Iraq today," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Viktoria Melamed said, adding that until then, Bulgaria could not confirm which of the two was killed.
The group of kidnappers led by suspected al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said Thursday last week that they would kill the two truck drivers: Georgi Lazov, 30, and Ivailo Kepov, 32 - unless U.S.-led forces released Iraqi prisoners.
Since the demand was made to a third party, Bulgaria launched a desperate diplomatic battle to rescue the men, contacting Arab leaders and appealing to the militants through Arab channels.
But the new North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) member held its ground on policy, saying its 470 troops in Iraq would stay as long as they were needed.
A spokesman for the South Oil Company said that the pipeline vandalisation had no significant impact on exports.
A shipping agent said export flow rates to the southern Basra offshore terminal fell on Wednesday to around 1.4 million barrels per day from 1.6 million the day before.
Defective pumps could also cause such fluctuation, an oil official said.
Iraqi crew rushed to the site near Al-Fathah between Kirkuk and Iraq's largest refinery at Beiji. It was not immediately known whether the country's northern export pipeline, which runs in the same area, was the one on fire.
"Smoke is filling the sky and there is a large pool of spilt oil," one witness said. "There are only shepherds here. They either don't know if it was sabotage or they are too afraid to say," he added.
The new interim government, which formally took power from U.S. - led occupation forces on June 28, has struggled to bring stability to Kirkuk, a region rich in oil but plagued by poverty and ethnic divisions.
Separately, gunmen yesterday shot dead an Iraq guard assigned to protect the country's northern oil pipelines.
He was the seventh member of the protection forces stationed near the Kirkuk oil fields to be killed while on duty, they said.`
