Sabotage costing Iraq billions

Attacks by saboteurs on Iraq's decrepit infrastructure and oil industry have cost the economy billions of dollars, the country's US governor said yesterday, as firefighters battled to control a pipeline blaze.

US Army engineers dropped water from helicopters to try to douse the flames on the main oil export pipeline to Turkey, a crucial economic lifeline which reopened last Wednesday but was shut down two days later after saboteurs set it ablaze.

US administrator Paul Bremer told CNN in an interview in Baghdad that hardcore supporters of fugitive dictator Saddam Hussein were behind the wave of sabotage attacks.

"These are probably people left over from the old regime who are simply fighting a rearguard action by attacking Iraq's assets," Bremer said. "We've had these attacks on a pretty regular basis over the last three months causing literally billions of dollars of losses to the Iraqi people."

Bremer said the death of Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana, shot dead by an American soldier on Sunday as he filmed outside a prison, was "a tragic accident". Dana was the second Reuters cameraman killed by US forces in Iraq.

The US military acknowledged that one of its soldiers had killed Dana, saying the journalist's camera had been mistaken for a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

US Army spokesman Colonel Guy Shields told reporters an investigation was under way into the shooting.

Reuters Chief Executive Tom Glocer called for "the fullest and most comprehensive investigation into this terrible tragedy". The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Sans Frontieres (Reporters Without Borders) in Paris also urged US authorities to conduct a full inquiry.

Journalists had gone to the US-run jail after the US Army announced that a mortar attack there on Saturday evening had killed at least six Iraqi prisoners and wounded scores.

Bremer said that as well as targeting the oil export pipeline, saboteurs had been mounting frequent attacks on the power grid. Sabotage and theft of power cables have caused repeated electricity blackouts in the south of Iraq and badly hit exports from the country's southern oilfields.

A bomb attack on a major water pipeline in north Baghdad on Sunday cut off water supplies to up to four million people for several hours, in searing summer temperatures.

More than 200,000 people were still without water supplies yesterday morning, but a spokesman for the UN agency UNICEF said its teams had repaired the damage by early afternoon.

The US-led administration in Iraq is relying on income from Iraq's vast oil reserves - the world's second largest - to provide the billions of dollars needed to rebuild the country. International donors will also be asked to pledge billions in aid at a conference in Madrid in October.

Attacks on occupying troops in Iraq have killed 60 US and seven British soldiers since Washington declared major combat over on May 1. A Danish soldier was also killed on Saturday west of Basra in a battle with thieves looting power cables.

Lieutenant Colonel William MacDonald, spokesman for the US 4th Infantry Division in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, said two US troops had been injured by small arms fire north of the town, in the latest attack on American convoys.

MacDonald said soldiers from the division had also killed two Iraqis over the past day - one a looter who ignored warning shots, and another who was in a car that was fired on after it failed to stop at a roadblock.