- BASRA, Iraq (Reuters) --
Suicide bombers launched three coordinated boat attacks on Iraq's vital
southern Basra offshore oil export terminal on Saturday, killing two members
of U.S.-led forces.
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- A spokeswoman for the U.S. Navy's Bahrain-based Fifth
Fleet said by telephone five other coalition members were wounded, but
a Fifth Fleet statement put the number at four. Officials said there was
no damage to the terminal, Iraq's primary oil outlet.
-
- "The coalition boarding team were killed and wounded
as a result of three concurrent waterborne attacks in the Arabian Gulf,"
the statement said.
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- A British Defense Ministry spokeswoman in London said:
"A boat exploded next to (the terminal). But there was no damage to
the oil terminal or the boat alongside it. As far as I know there were
no British casualties."
-
- Two of the attacking boats exploded alongside a ship
tied up at the terminal, some six miles offshore, British military spokesmen
and Iraqi officials said.
-
- The third boat was intercepted by a coalition ship as
it approached an exclusion zone around the terminal and there was an explosion
soon after it was boarded, they said.
-
- Officials at Iraq's Southern Oil Company said the Basra
terminal had been shut down.
-
- "All workers were evacuated (from the Basra terminal).
We are concerned about the possibility of more attacks," an official
stationed in the Faw Peninsula said.
-
- TERMINAL VITAL TO IRAQ
-
- Iraq is almost completely dependent on the terminal --
which is in Britain's sector of responsibility in the country -- to export
around 1.9 million barrels per day, providing badly needed funding for
a country battered by war and violence.
-
- A senior oil industry official in Baghdad said two oil
tankers had been scheduled to load two million barrels each at the Basra
terminal around the time of the attacks.
-
- The boat attacks followed a series of suicide car bombings
in the city of Basra itself this week that killed 73 people. President
Bush and Iraqi officials blamed those attacks on Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda.
-
- Yemen is holding 11 suspects over al Qaeda-linked attacks
on two Western ships on the Gulf Arab state's coast, including the U.S.
destroyer Cole in the port of Aden in 2000 in which 17 U.S. servicemen
were killed.
-
- Iraq's mainly Shi'ite Muslim south was relatively peaceful
until rebel Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr led a revolt this month by his
militia and supporters.
-
- Earlier this month, Iraqi Oil Minister Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum
said a planned mid-April major international oil and gas conference in
Basra had been postponed indefinitely due to security reasons.
-
- Northern oil installations, especially the export pipeline
to Turkey and the Mediterranean coast, have come under attack since the
war to oust Saddam Hussein a year ago, although less frequently in the
past few months, oil officials say.
-
- - Additional reporting by Miral Fahmy in Dubai, Jeremy
Lovell in London and Haitham Haddadin in Kuwait
-
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