- (AFP) -- An oil pumping station and pipelines were attacked
in Iraq as the US top military commander revealed that information gleaned
with the capture of ex-president Saddam Hussein resulted in hundreds of
arrests.
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- General Richard Myers, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs
of Staff, said Sunday several hundred people had been detained in Iraq
in a sweep against insurgents using intelligence gained in the wake of
Saddam's capture.
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- Myers said in media interviews the US military believed
some of the detainees were leaders of the insurgency against US-led forces
in Iraq arrested in a series of raids.
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- The general told CNN television that some of the information
used to identify them had come from a briefcase seized when US forces found
Saddam hiding in a hole under a farmhouse near his hometown of Tikrit.
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- "With the capture of Saddam Hussein, we learned
a little bit more about how they're organized and some of the individuals
involved," said the general, who has just returned from a visit to
Iraq.
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- "And what you see now is forces taking advantage
of that intelligence and going out and rounding up people. We've got over
200 detainees so far."
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- In Iraq, unidentified attackers fired mortar shells at
a pumping station 25 kilometres (15 miles) west of Kirkuk that feeds the
internal and export pipeline network to Turkey and Syria, a security official
told AFP.
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- Iraqi police also said they arrested four Iraqis who
planned to launch a rocket attack against US forces based at Kirkuk airport
and to blow up a giant fuel reservoir near Iraq's largest refinery at Baiji,
180 kilometres (110 miles) north of Baghdad.
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- Earlier, the US military denied reports of an attack
on a pipeline between Baiji and Tikrit, hometown of captured ex-leader
Saddam Hussein, and said the fires raging there were the result of burning
"residual fuel".
-
- Three anti-tank rockets hit a pipeline south of Baghdad
on Friday night causing a "significant" leakage, according to
Assem Jihad, spokesman for Iraq's interim oil minister Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulum.
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- Jihad also said that an explosive device hit a pipeline
in the Mashahda region, 50 kilometres (30 miles) north of the capital.
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- The attacks have limited the output of the central refineries,
already operating at half their capacity, said Jihad.
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- While motorists lined up for gasoline, US troops continued
their assault against insurgents targeting coalition forces.
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- Soldiers hunting for a local sheikh suspected of organising
anti-coalition attacks killed one Iraqi and wounded another after battling
25 armed men, an army spokeswoman said in Tikrit on Sunday.
-
- Meanwhile, a delegation from Iraq's US-installed Governing
Council arrived in Moscow late Sunday for high-level talks that are expected
to include the issue of multi-billion dollar oil contracts held by Russian
companies with Baghdad.
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- "The entire gamut of relations between our two countries
will be on the agenda, in particular the issue of debt," an Iraqi
was quoted by the Itar-Tass news agency as saying.
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- In Washington, US Senate Republicans signaled their readiness
to resume a probe into pre-war charges that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction,
which was halted more than six weeks ago amid bitter partisan bickering.
-
- "I think we will have, hopefully, some public hearings
by February," announced Pat Roberts, chairman of the US Senate intelligence
committee, appearing on CBS's "Face the Nation" program. "We
will get those questions out."
-
- US President George W. Bush and other top administration
officials had accused Iraq of secretly producing chemical and biological
weapons in violation of UN resolutions -- charges that were used to justify
the March invasion of the country.
-
- No banned weapons have been found in Iraq since then
despite an intense search by a team of experts from the Pentagon and the
Central Intelligence Agency.
-
- But US Senate hearings into the matter were suspended
in early November, after Senate Republicans, using a leaked Democratic
strategy paper, accused Democrats of trying to exploit the investigation
for political gain.
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- Fresh details also emerged over the weekend about the
circumstances of Saddam's arrest on December 13.
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- A tribal chief in the northern Iraqi village of Ad-Dawr
where Saddam was captured said the former dictator hid in the same farm
where he had sought refuge as a young man in 1959 after a botched assassination
bid on the then head of state Abdul Karim Qassem.
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- Sheikh Hassib Shahib Ahmed, head of the al-Muwasat tribe,
said the farm belonged to Qaiss Namach Jassem, the son of Jassem Namach
who sheltered Saddam 44 years ago, before he fled Iraq after the failed
murder attempt.
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- "Namach was offering the customary hospitality of
the Arabs to a man who was wounded and in danger," he told AFP.
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- Qaiss and his brothers were arrested after Saddam's capture
by US troops, said the sheikh.
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