Blasts cripple pipelines and stop exports of oil

Insurgents are targeting the country's infrastructure.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Saboteurs blasted a key pipeline today for the second time in two days, halting all oil exports from Iraq, officials said. Gunmen killed the top security official of the state-run Northern Oil Co. as insurgents stepped up attacks on Iraq's infrastructure.
The attack today north of the town of Faw crippled two already damaged pipelines, forcing a halt in all Iraqi oil exports southward through the Gulf, Southern Oil Co. spokesman Samir Jassim said.
"Due to the damage inflicted on the two pipelines, the pumping of oil to the Basra oil terminal has completely stopped," Jassim said. "Exports have come to halt."
Exports were halted last month through the other avenue -- the northern pipeline from Kirkuk to Ceyhan, Turkey, after a May 25 bombing, Turkish officials said on condition of anonymity.
Southern pipeline
Two explosions on the southern pipeline occurred in the same area as a blast Tuesday. It could take up to a week to repair the damage, Jassim said.
Another pipeline carrying oil to a domestic refinery was attacked Tuesday night near Dibis, some 20 miles west of Kirkuk, according to Mustafa Awad, an official in the Northern Oil Co.
That pipeline does not carry crude oil for export, however. The fire was extinguished.
Security official slain
The security officer for the Northern Oil Co. was killed in an ambush today in a crowded public market in Kirkuk. The victim, Ghazi Talabani, was a Kurd and a relative of the leader of one of Iraq's main Kurdish parties, Jalal Talabani.
Reviving petroleum exports is the key to restoring Iraq's economy after decades of war, international sanctions and Saddam Hussein's tyranny. However, repeated attacks have slowed the process of returning Iraq, with the world's second largest petroleum reserves after Saudi Arabia, to the forefront of global energy markets.
Insurgents are targeting the infrastructure apparently to undermine confidence in the new government, which takes power June 30. On Monday, a car bomb killed 13 people in Baghdad, including three foreign engineers working to restore the electricity sector.
Convoy ambushed
Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the coalition deputy operations chief, said another convoy of contractors was ambushed Tuesday in Baghdad. Two people were killed and three were injured when shots were fired from a highway overpass, the U.S. military said today.
Elsewhere, radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered members of his militia to leave the holy cities of Nafaj and Kufa -- unless they live there. The order today fulfilled a key aspect of an agreement meant to end fighting between his militia forces and U.S. troops.
Al-Sadr told fighters who had come to the holy cities from other parts of Iraq to help fight the Americans to return home "to carry on their duties as God wants," a statement from his office said.
The firebrand preacher said last week he would cooperate with the new interim Iraqi government if it works to end the U.S. military presence.
More killings
Elsewhere, a car bomb exploded Tuesday outside a coalition base near Hillah south of Baghdad, killing one Iraqi and wounding another, the U.S. military said. And gunmen killed an Iraqi police official in a town near Hillah as he went to work, the military said.
Meanwhile, new allegations surfaced about the professionalism of the Iraqi police, who are due to assume greater responsibility for security after the formal end of the occupation June 30.
On Tuesday, dozens of Iraqi Shiites complained that Shiite truck drivers who had sought refuge in a police station in the Sunni town of Fallujah were instead handed over to extremists, who killed them after they were unable to pay a ransom. Six bodies were found Monday in a morgue in Ramadi, also a Sunni town.
At a protest rally, a 12-year-old boy, Mohammed Khudeir, said he was among those reportedly handed over by the police to a hardline cleric. But the cleric and his followers let him go, apparently because of his age.
"We tried to seek police protection, but the policemen handed us over," Mohammed said. He said the cleric "handed us over to a group of Arabs who spoke with non-Iraqi accents. I was tortured for a while, but then I was released."
Mohammed said the insurgents killed his brother and uncle.