Suicide bombers target oil

2004-04-25 07:49

Basra, Iraq - Two US servicemen were killed on Saturday as they helped to foil a series of suicide boat bomb attacks on Iraq's southern oil terminals, officials and the US Navy said.

The two men were part of an eight-strong boarding party thrown into the sea when a boat they were about to board exploded as it neared an exclusion zone surrounding the key oil facility at Khor Al-Amaya.

Another two boats headed towards four oil tankers waiting to load at the main Basra terminal nearby but were stopped when security teams opened fire, according to officials.

One exploded just seven metres from a tanker in the Saturday afternoon attacks, according to port official Hamed al-Assadi, causing a power cut, and stopping crude oil loading. There were no casualties in that attack.

The attempted raids appeared similar to an attack on the USS Cole in October 2000 while it was refuelling in Yemen when it was rammed by a boat filled with explosives killing 17 sailors and wounding 39. The attack was blamed on Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.

The sailors were killed on Saturday at about 17:00 (13:00 GMT) after the dhow, a traditional Arab boat, was spotted heading towards the oil facility and a team from a warship was sent to intercept it.

Two crew members killed

"Two crew members of a coalition boarding team were killed and four other crew members wounded as a result of three concurrent waterborne attacks on oil terminals located in the northern Arabian Gulf," the US Navy said in a statement issued in Bahrain, where the Fifth Fleet is based.

"As the eight-member boarding team approached the dhow in a rigid hull inflatable boat (RHIB), the dhow exploded, flipping the RHIB and throwing the crew into the water, killing two and wounding four."

The dead and injured were picked up by other ships and taken to a military hospital in Kuwait. A US Navy spokesperson confirmed the two dead as US servicemen.

Twenty minutes later, two other boats were seen heading towards the Basra terminal seven kilometres to the west but they were intercepted before they reached it. "Initial reports indicate no damage to either terminal," the navy statement added.

A defence ministry spokesperson in London confirmed there had been an explosion at the Basra terminal 11 kilometres offshore, south of the Iran-Iraq border.

The attacks came three days after suicide car bombings against police stations in and around the southern city of Basra that left 74 people dead and more than 160 injured.

Officials from the US-led coalition said the car bomb attacks also bore all the hallmarks of an al-Qaeda attack.

In March, Iraq raised its crude export capacity in the south to 1.8 million barrels a day.

- SAPA