Iraq rebels fired mortars at Baghdad's main oil refinery late Friday in a renewed assault on key infrastructure as a US commander suggested such attacks marked a new twist in insurgent tactics.
A huge fire broke out at the Dura oil refinery on the outskirts of the capital after it was hit by two mortar rounds, oil ministry spokesman Assem Jihad said.
Some 150 firefighters battled the blaze for more than two hours before putting it out. Three people suffered minor burns, Jihad said.
"It appears to be a mortar that hit one of the pipelines attached to one of the reservoirs," Oil Minister Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulum, who visited the plant after the attack, told reporters.
"It is all under control now -- the reservoir is damaged a bit but the refinery will be operating at capacity again."
The Dura refinery, which can handle about 100,000 barrels a day, supplies Baghdad with most of its petrol and fuels a key power plant.
"Dura is the backbone for fulfilling Baghdad's energy needs, there have been several attempts to stop the refinery," the minister said, recalling an attack five days earlier on a key feeder pipeline.
The capital's water supply has also come under mounting attack. On Thursday, insurgents bombed a key main, leaving half the city without water at the height of summer in the third such attack in as many weeks.
A US commander said the renewed assault on vital infrastructure suggested a new shift of focus by the insurgents.
"This enemy is now starting to attack infrastructure," the commander said, asking not be identified.
"This isn't new, but it's a new turn in the strategy," after a flurry of attacks on diplomats in the past week including the kidnapping and murder of Egypt's head of mission Ihab al-Sharif.
"As we come down hard on a particular group or a particular kind of attack, they'll move to something else.
Bahraini, Pakistani and Russian diplomats also came under fire in a tactic the commander predicted was likely to continue.
"Our projection is that will continue," he said, adding that the Iraqi government and its US backers should turn their attention to providing "new safeguards" for foreign envoys.
An AFP photographer saw several Egyptian diplomats leave the embassy with their bags on Saturday morning after Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit announced a sharp drawdown of mission staff following Sharif's killing.
In persistent violence on the ground, four US soldiers were wounded on Friday when a suicide bomber rammed an army patrol vehicle with his car and blew himself up, just north of Baghdad, the US military said.
The blast also set a number of nearby shops on fire.
US forces detained 22 suspected insurgents in a sweep near the town of Fallujah, a former insurgent enclave west of the capital that was recaptured in a massive offensive late last year.
And four members of the same family, including a child and a woman, were found shot dead in their home in the northern refinery town of Baiji.
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