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Two GIs killed in attack on base in Iraq
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-06-17 00:18

A rocket slammed into a U.S. logistics base Wednesday near the city of Balad, killing two U.S. soldiers and wounding 21 people, the military said.

Fourteen of the injured were taken to the U.S. Army's 31st Combat Support Hospital and seven were treated at a clinic on the U.S. base, known as Camp Anaconda, according to a military statement.


U.S. Army Reserve's officers carry the coffin of Sgt. Melvin Mora Lopez during his burial at the cemetery of Arecibo, 48 miles (77 kilometers) west of San Juan, Puerto Rico, Monday, June 14, 2004. Mora Lopez, 28, was killed on June 6 in a mortar attack at Camp Cooke, on the Al Taji air base, north of Baghdad, Iraq. [AP]

Air and ground units responded to the attack, the military said. Balad is 50 miles north of Baghdad.

The military statement did not specify whether the injured were U.S. soldiers or included civilians or others on the sprawling compound.

On June 6, a U.S. soldier on the same base was killed and another wounded in a mortar attack. Camp Anaconda was also the scene of a mortar attack last July 4 that wounded 18 U.S. soldiers.

Also Wednesday, saboteurs blasted a key southern pipeline for the second time in as many days, shutting down Iraq's oil exports, and gunmen killed a security chief for the state-run Northern Oil Co.

The latest attacks at Iraq's oil sector have slowed the process of reviving its economy after decades of war, international sanctions and Saddam Hussein's tyranny. Insurgents also are targeting the country's infrastructure apparently to undermine confidence in the new government, which takes power from the U.S.-led coalition June 30.

Elsewhere, radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered members of his militia to leave the holy cities of Najaf and Kufa unless they live there, fulfilling a key aspect of an agreement meant to end fighting between his forces and U.S. troops.

Wednesday's attack north of the town of Faw crippled two already damaged pipelines, forcing authorities to stop the flow of crude oil southward to the Basra oil terminal on the Gulf, said Southern Oil Co. spokesman Samir Jassim.

Exports were halted last month through the other export avenue — the northern pipeline from Kirkuk to Ceyhan, Turkey — after a May 25 bombing, Turkish officials said on condition of anonymity.

Two explosions on the southern pipeline occurred in the same area as a blast Tuesday. It could take up to a week to repair, Jassim said.

In another assault on the country's petroleum industry, Northern Oil Co. security chief Ghazi Talabani was killed in an ambush while going to work in the city of Kirkuk, said Gen. Anwar Amin of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps. Three gunmen attacked Talabani's car after his bodyguard briefly left the vehicle in a crowded market. The bodyguard was wounded.

Talabani, the third Iraqi official to be killed since Saturday. was the cousin of the head of one of the two main Kurdish political parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

Kirkuk sits on some of the world's largest oil reserves. The biggest northern oil field contains an estimated 7 billion barrels of recoverable crude, putting it in the same league as Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, during its heyday in the 1970s.

Saboteurs also blasted a northern oil pipeline about midnight Tuesday near the town of Dibis, some 20 miles west of Kirkuk, said Northern Oil official Mustafa Awad. The Dibis attack did not disrupt exports and the fire was extinguished, Iraqi oil officials said Wednesday.

Iraq's southern pipeline has been its main export artery ever since the U.S.-led invasion. Repeated sabotage attacks have forced Iraqis to curtail oil shipments in the north, and most of Iraq's crude exports now come from the south.

 
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