Iraq Halts Oil Pumping As Fighting Rages Across The Country

BASRA, Iraq, Aug 9 (AFP) - Pumping of vital oil from southern Iraq halted Monday as factional fighting raged across the country, pitting rebel groups against foreign and government forces.
As Shiite Muslim militiamen loyal to hardline cleric Moqtada Sadr continued to battle US and government troops in the holy city of Najaf, attacks also hit British troops in the southern city of Basra.
Northeast of Baghdad six people were killed by a suicide car bomb apparently aimed at a deputy to the provincial governor, who escaped with wounds, while to the west another car blew up near Ramadi, killing four.
Iraq`s Southern Oil Company stopped pumping oil "for security reasons" after Shiite militia threatened to attack local oil infrastructure, company spokesman Mohammed al-Mohammedi said without giving further details.
The south is currently the only outlet for Iraqi oil exports after an attack on the pipeline to Turkey brought limited shipments from the northern oilfields to a halt last week.
Six people were killed east of the restive city of Baquba, including five policemen, and 16 wounded, among them civilians and police, said General Daoud Mohammed Aziz, the police chief of Baladruz.
The bomb exploded as Akeel Hamid, an assistant to the provincial governor, was leaving his home in the town, said Lieutenant Mohammed Abed. Aziz confirmed it was a suicide bombing.
An Islamist website said the militant group of Al-Qaeda`s alleged chief in Iraq, Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility.
The authenticity of the statement could not be verified.
In Najaf, south of Baghdad, artillery and tanks, backed by air power, battered the Shiite holy city as Sadr`s Mehdi Army fought US troops and Iraqi government forces for a fifth straight day.
Since the fighting erupted last Thursday, when the militia attacked the main police station and governor Adnan al-Zorfi requested US support, the US military estimates that more than 360 insurgents have been killed.
The US toll stands at four dead and 19 members of the US-led multinational forces wounded.
But a spokesman for Sadr insisted that only 15 militiamen had been killed and 35 wounded.
Sadr Monday rejected a call from Prime Minister Iyad Allawi for his forces to quit Najaf, saying he would fight to his last drop of blood against foreign occupation.
Najaf police chief General Ghaleb al-Jazari paraded some 280 prisoners in front of the press, after masked men in a video shown on Al-Jazeera television said they were holding a senior police official as a hostage for the release of detainees.
Jazari also admitted that he had proposed to the government cutting off water, electricity and food supplies to the Mehdi Army`s holdouts in Najaf.
The suggestions were contained in a letter to the interior ministry disclosed by a Sadr spokesman, which Jazairi said had been seized from his car when his chauffeur was abducted Sunday.
In Sadr`s Baghdad stronghold of Sadr City, mortar bombs fired at the district council hall slammed into neighbouring houses. There were no reports of casualties.
The Iraqi government decided to impose a curfew in the impoverished suburb between 4 pm (1200 GMT) and 8 am (0400 GMT), an interior ministry spokesman told AFP.
Three rounds of mortar fire also struck the oil ministry compound in Baghdad, the ministry said, again without leaving casualties.
Mehdi Army militiamen attacked a British military convoy in Basra with a rocket-propelled grenade, destroying a vehicle without causing casualties, a British spokesman said.
Two vehicles, including a Land Rover, were seen burning at the scene as about 100 armed militiamen fanned out across the area.
Militiamen were also out in force in the city`s suburbs.
Salam al-Maliky, Sadr`s representative in the city and a member of the provincial authority, earlier threatened to fight for the secession of the three southern provinces of Basra, Dhiqar and Maysan from the rest of Iraq if US troops did not withdraw from Najaf.
Another Sadr aide, Asaad al-Basri, warned that "Basra would be turned into another Najaf" if the US military did not pull out of the holy city.
In Mussayab, some 50 kilometres (30 miles) south of the capital, a police lieutenant was killed and three policemen wounded when insurgents attacked a patrol on Monday, police said.
Nine gunmen were later arrested in Imam On, 10 kilometres (six miles) north of the Shiite holy city of Karbala, after a car chase, they said.
A car blew up east of Ramadi, killing four unidentified Iraqis who were inside but causing no other casualties, according to medics and witnesses.
Separately, five people were wounded in a mortar attack on a residential neighbourhood in the city, police and medics said.
One Iraqi was also killed by a roadside bomb east of Kirkuk, while the police station and airport, where US troops are based, came under rocket fire, police General Burhan Habib said.
Smoke was seen rising from the airport and sirens went off, but the US military was not immediately available to confirm an attack.
At Amara, north of Basra, 15 Mehdi Army militiamen fired at offices of Allawi`s Iraqi National Accord party then told all those inside to leave, saying they would torch the premises as happened in Nasiriyah the previous night, party officials said.