Oil pipeline set ablaze near Iraq's Kirkuk
KIRKUK, Iraq (AFP) — Suspected insurgents set ablaze an oil pipeline near the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk on Friday, halting the flow as firefighters scrambled to tackle a massive blaze, police said.
"According to first reports the explosion was an act of sabotage, probably by insurgents who blew up a subsidiary pipeline with an improvised explosive device," a police spokesman said.
The attack happened near Al-Safra, about 60 kilometres (40 miles) west of Kirkuk, the main oil city in northern Iraq, on a pipeline that carries crude from the province's rich oilfields to the refinery city of Baiji, he told AFP.
Huge licks of flame and plumes of smoke could be seen billowing into the sky as firefighting teams arrived at the scene to try and extinguish the blaze.
A spokesman for the Northern Oil Company said they expected the flames to be brought under control within a few hours, and that the flow of oil through the pipeline had been halted in the meantime.
The damage would be assessed after the blaze had been extinguished, the spokesman said.
Insurgents have launched deadly attacks over recent months in Kirkuk, an ethnically volatile city claimed both by the Arabs and Kurds.
Longstanding Kurdish demands for Kirkuk to be incorporated in their autonomous region in northern Iraq are due to be put to a referendum by December 30.
