Suicide bombers strike at Iraqi oil

BAGHDAD — Suicide attackers detonated explosive-laden boats near vital Iraqi oil facilities in the Persian Gulf yesterday, killing two U.S. Navy sailors and capping a wave of violence that left at least five American soldiers and 33 Iraqis dead.

The maritime attack against oil facilities was the first of its kind since U.S. troops invaded more than a year ago, and targeted a critical economic lifeline for Iraq, shutting the terminal at least temporarily. The blasts resembled attacks in 2000 and 2002 — blamed on the terrorist al Qaeda network — against the USS Cole and a French oil tanker off the coast of Yemen that killed 17 American sailors and a tanker crewman.

In yesterday’s attack, three small boats drew close to two major oil terminals in Gulf waters about 100 miles from Iraq’s main port, Umm Qasr, and exploded when coalition craft tried to intercept them. A U.S. Navy craft was flipped by the blast, killing the American sailors and injuring five others, the U.S. military said.

Initial reports said there was no damage to the terminals, where operations were temporarily suspended, and Iraq’s main southern oil outlet, Umm Qasr, remained open, a British spokesman said.

Officials at Iraq’s Southern Oil Co. said the terminal, which is in Britain’s sector of responsibility in the country, had been shut down for an undisclosed period.

“All workers were evacuated. We are concerned about the possibility of more attacks,” one official said.

The boat bombings came on a day of multiple attacks in Iraq, highlighted by a roadside bomb that hit a bus south of Baghdad, killing at least 14 Iraqis and wounding 12. A mortar barrage struck a crowded market in the capital’s biggest Shi’ite neighborhood, Sadr City, killing at least 13.

The U.S. soldiers were killed around dawn, when two rockets were fired from a truck and slammed into the base in Taji, 12 miles north of Baghdad, the military said. U.S. helicopter gunships then destroyed the truck. Seven soldiers were wounded, three of them critically, the military said.

The latest deaths, along with the combat death of a Marine announced yesterday, brought to 108 the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq since the beginning of April. The military announced the death of a soldier in a noncombat incident, bringing to 717 the number of service members who have died in the country.

Insurgents in Iraq frequently have attacked oil pipelines, repeatedly shutting down exports from northern oil fields through Turkey. Southern pipelines, running through relatively more peaceable Shi’ite regions, have seen fewer attacks.

Iraq is producing about 2 million barrels of oil a day, according to the Middle East Economic Survey, and oil revenues are considered critical to Iraq’s long-term economic recovery.

The stepped-up violence came as U.S. commanders repeated warnings that they may soon launch a new assault on the besieged city of Fallujah, saying anti-coalition guerrillas had not abided by a call to surrender heavy weapons.

L. Paul Bremer, the top U.S. administrator in Iraq, traveled to the Marine base outside Fallujah for consultations yesterday, while Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt told reporters: “Should there not be a good-faith effort demonstrated by the belligerents inside Fallujah, the coalition is prepared to act.”

In yesterday’s bloodiest incident, a bomb exploded on a main road as a bus passed near Haswa, 30 miles south of Baghdad. The back of the bus was shredded and seats crumpled. At least 13 persons — including a 4-year-old boy — were killed and 17 wounded, said Wasan Nasser, a doctor at Iskan Hospital in neighboring Iskandariyah.

In Sadr City, Baghdad’s sprawling Shi’ite slum, residents vented anger at U.S. forces after the mortar attacks, which followed an early-morning clash in the neighborhood between U.S. troops and militiamen loyal to a radical Shiite cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr.

Some of the mortar shells in yesterday’s barrage against Sadr City, which killed at least seven persons, hit two miles from any U.S. position — suggesting they may have deliberately targeted civilians in the Shi’ite neighborhood.

Before the mortar fire, U.S. troops launched a predawn raid into Sadr City, pursuing militiamen loyal to Sheik al-Sadr. They were caught in a gunbattle in which two Iraqis were killed, according to U.S. Maj. Phil Smith.

During the fighting, a shell pierced the wall of a house, exploding in a bedroom and severely burning a 9-year-old girl and two teenage girls as they slept.

U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt suggested former members of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein’s security services were to blame.

“It was clearly an attack on civilians. There was no U.S. military at that spot,” said Lt. Col. James Hutton of the Army’s 1st Cavalry Division, which responded to the attack and helped treat the wounded.

In other violence yesterday:

• An Iraqi woman working as a U.S. military translator was shot and killed with her husband as they drove to a U.S. base, a hospital official said.

• A roadside bomb destroyed a car carrying Iraqis near a U.S. base in the northern city of Tikrit, hometown of Saddam and a center for anti-U.S. resistance. Four Iraqis — two police and two civilians — were killed and 16 wounded, the U.S. military said.

• Polish troops clashed overnight with Shi’ite militiamen in the city of Karbala, killing five, a spokesman for the multinational peacekeeping force in south-central Iraq said.