A ferocious blaze raged for a third day at a giant oil pipeline in northern Iraq, and US military officials yesterday said it was too soon to say what triggered the fire. Earlier, Iraqi police officials blamed saboteurs.
The Danish army reported one of its soldier died after being shot during a gun battle with armed Iraqis whose truck had been stopped during a routine patrol near Basra in southern Iraq.
The soldier was the first Dane to be killed in Iraq since Denmark sent a contingent of about 400 soldiers this summer to join the occupation force in the Basra region.
Two Iraqis were killed in the shootout Saturday, one was wounded and six were arrested, the Danish army command said in Copenhagen.
In northern Baghdad overnight a big water main was hit by an explosion, flooding streets and cutting supplies to a part of the city.
Witnesses said they saw two men on the motorbike leaving a bag of explosives and detonating it minutes later in the early hours yesterday.
L. Paul Bremer, the US civilian administrator of Iraq, said the country was losing US$7 million daily with the oil export pipeline out of operation.
The new Iraqi police commander had vowed on Saturday to pursue the "conspirators" behind the attack that halted oil exports to Turkey only days after they resumed, cutting off vital income for an economy in shambles.
The crumbling network of pipe had begun pumping oil to Turkey on Wednesday, and the explosion early Friday near Baiji, 200km northeast of Baghdad, cut it off completely, acting Iraqi oil minister Thamer al-Ghadaban said in the capital.
Police Brigadier General Ahmed Ibrahim, once imprisoned for speaking out against former president Saddam Hussein, was appointed Saturday to be the top Iraqi law enforcement official. He blamed the explosion on "a group of conspirators who received money from a particular party," which he didn't identify.
"With God's help, we will arrest those people and bring them to justice," Ibrahim said. "The damage inflicted on the pipeline is damage done to all Iraqi people."
But a US military spokesman said it was too soon to say whether the explosion was an accident or sabotage.
"Until it's cooled off, nobody can say exactly what happened," said Lieutenant Colonel William MacDonald, of the 4th Infantry Division based in Tikrit. People on the ground were still waiting to investigate the cause, he said.
Al-Ghadaban said it would take several days to get the pipeline working again.
"It is a large pipeline with large volume of crude oil," he said.
People can preregister to receive their NT$10,000 (US$325) cash distributed from the central government on Nov. 5 after President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday signed the Special Budget for Strengthening Economic, Social and National Security Resilience, the Executive Yuan told a news conference last night. The special budget, passed by the Legislative Yuan on Friday last week with a cash handout budget of NT$236 billion, was officially submitted to the Executive Yuan and the Presidential Office yesterday afternoon. People can register through the official Web site at https://10000.gov.tw to have the funds deposited into their bank accounts, withdraw the funds at automated teller
PEACE AND STABILITY: Maintaining the cross-strait ‘status quo’ has long been the government’s position, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Taiwan is committed to maintaining the cross-strait “status quo” and seeks no escalation of tensions, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday, rebutting a Time magazine opinion piece that described President William Lai (賴清德) as a “reckless leader.” The article, titled “The US Must Beware of Taiwan’s Reckless Leader,” was written by Lyle Goldstein, director of the Asia Program at the Washington-based Defense Priorities think tank. Goldstein wrote that Taiwan is “the world’s most dangerous flashpoint” amid ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He said that the situation in the Taiwan Strait has become less stable
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi yesterday lavished US President Donald Trump with praise and vows of a “golden age” of ties on his visit to Tokyo, before inking a deal with Washington aimed at securing critical minerals. Takaichi — Japan’s first female prime minister — pulled out all the stops for Trump in her opening test on the international stage and even announced that she would nominate him for a Nobel Peace Prize, the White House said. Trump has become increasingly focused on the Nobel since his return to power in January and claims to have ended several conflicts around the world,
REASSURANCE: The US said Taiwan’s interests would not be harmed during the talk and that it remains steadfast in its support for the nation, the foreign minister said US President Donald Trump on Friday said he would bring up Taiwan with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) during a meeting on the sidelines of the APEC Summit in South Korea this week. “I will be talking about Taiwan [with Xi],” Trump told reporters before he departed for his trip to Asia, adding that he had “a lot of respect for Taiwan.” “We have a lot to talk about with President Xi, and he has a lot to talk about with us. I think we’ll have a good meeting,” Trump said. Taiwan has long been a contentious issue between the US and China.
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