Iraqi-Turkish pipeline on fire

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: An act of sabotage has targeted a pipeline that links the Turkish Ceyhan Port to Iraq’s northern oilfields, triggering a large fire that prompted a halt to crude exports in the area, according to an Iraqi official. “A fire broke out in the pipeline linking Kirkuk’s oilfields to the Turkish Ceyhan Port in Mardin area (100 km north of the Iraqi-Turkish borders),” a spokesperson for the Iraqi Ministry of Oil, Aasem Jihad, told IraqiNews.com. A crisis cell, headed by the minister of oil, Hussein al-Shahrestani, has been set up to bring the fire under control, according to the spokesperson. Last October, a foreign relations official in the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), Abdelrahman al-Jadirji, threatened to hit Iraqi-Turkish oil pipelines. The party has claimed responsibility for similar attacks on pipelines in eastern Turkey. Kirkuk, 250 km (156 miles) north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, sits on the ruins of a 5,000-year-old settlement. Kirkuk is the centre of the northern Iraqi petroleum industry. It is a historically and ethnically mixed city populated by Assyrians, Kurds, Arabs and Iraqi Turkmen. The population was estimated at 1,200,000 in 2008. SS (S) 1