Blasts pepper Iraq oil network after Al-Qaeda sabotage call

Bombers also targeted a US patrol in Mosul, killing one Iraqi and wounding eight, just 24 hours after four Turkish security guards were mown down in an ambush in the main northern city.

The violence came as an Iraqi special tribunal announced that it had held its first investigative hearings of former regime officials, beginning with Ali Hassan al-Majid, better known as "Chemical Ali" for his alleged role in the gassing of Kurdish civilians.

There were two blasts on pipelines Saturday and three late Friday, all of them in restive Sunni Arab areas around the capital or in north-central Iraq, officials said.

The saboteurs struck pipelines serving both Iraq's northern and southern oilfields and halted the flow of crude to Baghdad's Daura refinery, interrupting the production of refined fuel, the oil ministry said.

A pipeline carrying refined products from Iraq's main northern refinery at Baiji to storage reservoirs in the capital was also hit, further reducing supplies, officials said.

One of Friday evening's attacks was claimed by an Islamic militant group loyal to bin Laden, the Al-Qaeda Organization of Mesopotamia, in a leaflet distributed in Baiji.

The leaflet said the sabotage had been carried out in response to Thursday's Internet message from the Al-Qaeda "supreme commander," in which he ordered followers to strike oil facilities in both Iraq and the Gulf.

Oil ministry spokesman Jihad Assem condemned the upsurge in "terrorist acts" which he said were depriving Iraqis of essential fuel and the country of desperately needed export revenues.

"These terrorist acts, which coincide with the threats from bin Laden, are aimed at depriving ordinary people of fuel so that the crisis worsens," he charged.

"They are costing Iraqis hundreds of millions of dollars."

In Mosul, one Iraqi was killed and eight wounded by a bomb targeting a US patrol, medics and a witness said. A US spokesman said the blast hit a school bus.

The attack came just a day after four Turkish security guards were ambushed in the city's Yarmuk neighbourhood.

"Armed men made the passengers get out of the cars, lie on the ground, machine-gunned them and cut off the head off one of them," Muhammet Tahir, an official of the Turkmen Front in Mosul, was quoted as telling the Turkish press agency DHA.

One of the guards and a driver survived the attack and returned to Turkey, while two other guards made it safely to the embassy in Baghdad, the foreign ministry said.

"Our authorities are investigating the matter and trying to obtain more information from the Iraqi interim government and local officials."

About 70 Turkish nationals, mainly truck drivers, have been killed in Iraq since last year's US-led invasion, most of them in road attacks and several at the hands of hostage-takers.

In Mosul, US Lieutenant Colonel Paul Hastings, spokesman for Task Force Olympia, said that troops had recovered "three male bodies evidently killed earlier during the day in a rebel attack."

"All three had bullet wounds. The fourth, reported by news agencies, was not recovered," he said.

The first war crimes hearings of former regime officials were announced by investigating magistrates of the Iraq Special Tribunal, established by the US-led coalition last December.

Defence minister Sultan Hashem Ahmed, who is also accused of involvement in the gassing of Kurdish civilians in the town of Halabja in 1988, appeared alongside Chemical Ali, chief magistrate Rayed Juhi told a news conference.

"An investigating magistrate on Saturday heard Ali Hassan al-Majid and Sultan Hashem, in the presence of their lawyer," he said.

Recent days have seen a sharp stepping up of preparations to try Saddam Hussein and his 11 captive lieutenants, including a first meeting between the ousted leader and his lawyer.

The move has not met with universal approval, with interim Justice Minister Malek Dohan al-Hassan arguing hearings should have been delayed until after landmark January 30 elections.

Juhi stressed that Saturday's hearings were purely investigative and that actual trials were still a long way off.

"Rapidity can damage justice," he said.

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