Anti-US guerillas trying to discredit Iraq's new interim government killed an Iraqi oil official and attacked foreign contractors yesterday after strangling the country's oil export lifeline.
With the formal end to US-led occupation only two weeks away, the shadowy insurgents have intensified assassinations and suicide bombings to prove that the interim government cannot hope to assert control after the handover.
In the latest attack on Iraq's oil industry, saboteurs blew a hole in one of Iraq's two southern oil export pipelines yesterday for the second time in 48 hours, an Iraqi oil source told Reuters. The source said the damage was "fairly big".
US Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz, on a visit to Iraq previously shrouded in secrecy, met interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and the defence and interior ministers.
"The meeting discussed the strategy of the Iraqi government to deal with important and serious issues of security, the economy and the political process," a US statement said, without elaborating.
Mr Wolfowitz, a powerful advocate of last year's US-led invasion, escaped a guerilla rocket attack on his hotel during an earlier visit to Baghdad in October.
A rocket attack on a US base near Balad, north of Baghdad, yesterday killed two US soldiers and wounded at least 21 people, an American army statement said.
A bomb attack destroyed an Iraqi police car and a civilian vehicle carrying foreigners in the western city of Ramadi.
At least six Iraqis, including a policeman, were killed in the blast, a US Marine spokesman said. Witnesses said foreigners were also believed to be among the casualties.
Gunmen killed Ghazi Talabani, 70, a senior adviser in Iraq's North Oil Company, in the northern city of Kirkuk, in the latest of many attacks on Iraqis accused by insurgents of collaborating with the US-British occupation.
Police said Mr Talabani was shot as he was being driven to work. His driver was badly wounded. The gunmen escaped.
Manna al-Ubeidi, a senior official of the company, said Mr Talabani, a second cousin of Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani, was a popular figure who had refused to employ bodyguards.
An Iraqi official said all crude oil exports from southern Gulf ports had stopped after saboteurs hit pipelines feeding the Basra and Khor al-Amaya terminals this week. Sabotage had already stopped exports via a northern pipeline to Turkey.
Iraq was exporting over 1.6 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil, its only independent source of revenue, and had hoped to match pre-war levels of some two million bpd by June 30. Industry sources said repairs could take at least a week, costing Iraq nearly $60 million a day until deliveries resume.