Fires blazed on a major pipeline from Iraq's northern oilfields yesterday after what residents said were twin bomb attacks aimed at sabotaging exports through Turkey.
Two separate fires were seen on the pipeline, 15km from the key refinery town of Baiji, close to the main highway between Baghdad and the northern regional capital of Mosul.
Residents at the nearby Al-Amin coffee shop said the pipeline had been attacked by Iraqis using explosives around 8:45pm on Thursday, the same day Iraq awarded its first postwar oil export contracts.
"We heard two explosions and ran," said the coffee shop's owner, Abu Ala. "We saw fire shooting out of the pipeline in two places. Shortly afterward two American helicopters arrived."
Customers said it had been a deliberate act of sabotage.
"Some Iraqis came and blew it up," said Kazem Ibrahim.
Khidr Aziz said, "It's to stop the Americans taking the oil out to Turkey."
Less than an hour's drive north of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's native city of Tikrit, the mainly Sunni Arab region around Baiji was considered a stronghold of his Sunni-dominated regime and several residents expressed hostility to the US-led occupation.
On Thursday, Iraq's US-led administration awarded a raft of contracts to international oil companies to lift crude, the first since the US-led war.
‘GREAT OPPRTUNITY’: The Paraguayan president made the remarks following Donald Trump’s tapping of several figures with deep Latin America expertise for his Cabinet Paraguay President Santiago Pena called US president-elect Donald Trump’s incoming foreign policy team a “dream come true” as his nation stands to become more relevant in the next US administration. “It’s a great opportunity for us to advance very, very fast in the bilateral agenda on trade, security, rule of law and make Paraguay a much closer ally” to the US, Pena said in an interview in Washington ahead of Trump’s inauguration today. “One of the biggest challenges for Paraguay was that image of an island surrounded by land, a country that was isolated and not many people know about it,”
‘DISCRIMINATION’: The US Office of Personnel Management ordered that public DEI-focused Web pages be taken down, while training and contracts were canceled US President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday moved to end affirmative action in federal contracting and directed that all federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) staff be put on paid leave and eventually be laid off. The moves follow an executive order Trump signed on his first day ordering a sweeping dismantling of the federal government’s diversity and inclusion programs. Trump has called the programs “discrimination” and called to restore “merit-based” hiring. The executive order on affirmative action revokes an order issued by former US president Lyndon Johnson, and curtails DEI programs by federal contractors and grant recipients. It is using one of the
‘FIGHT TO THE END’: Attacking a court is ‘unprecedented’ in South Korea and those involved would likely face jail time, a South Korean political pundit said Supporters of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol yesterday stormed a Seoul court after a judge extended the impeached leader’s detention over his ill-fated attempt to impose martial law. Tens of thousands of people had gathered outside the Seoul Western District Court on Saturday in a show of support for Yoon, who became South Korea’s first sitting head of state to be arrested in a dawn raid last week. After the court extended his detention on Saturday, the president’s supporters smashed windows and doors as they rushed inside the building. Hundreds of police officers charged into the court, arresting dozens and denouncing an
One of Japan’s biggest pop stars and best-known TV hosts, Masahiro Nakai, yesterday announced his retirement over sexual misconduct allegations, reports said, in the latest scandal to rock Japan’s entertainment industry. Nakai’s announcement came after now-defunct boy band empire Johnny & Associates admitted in 2023 that its late founder, Johnny Kitagawa, for decades sexually assaulted teenage boys and young men. Nakai was a member of the now-disbanded SMAP — part of Johnny & Associates’s lucrative stable — that swept the charts in Japan and across Asia during the band’s nearly 30 years of fame. Reports emerged last month that Nakai, 52, who since
RSS