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Soldiers made deadly 'mistake'
18/08/2003 10:40 - (SA)
Baghdad - The US Army acknowledged on Monday that it had killed a television journalist after soldiers had mistaken his camera for a rocket propelled grenade launcher.
Meanwhile, saboteurs set back efforts to rebuild Iraq over the weekend with attacks on the countries lifeblood oil pipelines and the capital's water supply.
The water main bombing came on Sunday as two oil fires raged out of control along an oil pipeline to Turkey, halting exports just days after they started. The first blaze appeared to be sabotage, a coalition spokesman said.
A new group of resistance fighters vowed on Sunday to battle the US-led occupation whether or not it helps rebuild the country.
In new violence, a mortar attack on a Baghdad prison being used by the United States killed six Iraqis and injured about 60.
Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana, 41, was videotaping outside the prison hours after the attack when US soldiers shot him. He was the 17th news organisation employee to be killed since the war began.
The videotape in Dana's camera showed two US tanks coming toward him. Two shots were fired, apparently from the tanks, and Dana fell to the ground. His body was taken away by a US helicopter.
"We saw a tank 50m away, I heard six shots and Mazen fell to the ground," Dana's driver Munzer Abbas said.
One of the soldiers started shouting at us, but when he knew we were journalists, he softened. One of the soldiers told us they thought Mazen carrying a rocket-propelled grenade."
"There were many journalists around. They knew we were journalists. This was not an accident," Abbas said.
A US military official said on condition of anonymity that American soldiers saw Dana from a distance and mistook him for an Iraqi guerrilla, so they opened fire. When the soldiers came closer, they realised Dana was a journalist, the official said.
"This is clearly another tragic incident, it is extremely regrettable," Central Command spokesperson Sergeant Major Lewis Matson said.
Stephen Jukes, Reuters's global head of news, said, "Mazen was one of Reuters's finest cameramen and we are devastated by his loss."
Sunday's explosion in northern Baghdad blew a hole in a 1.5m-diameter water main, flooding streets. People waded through chest-high water in some areas. Witnesses said two men on a motorbike left a bag of explosives and detonated it minutes later.
"It was an act of sabotage," said Majid Noufel, a Baghdad water company engineer. "We've had to stop pumping water to the whole city so we can fix the damage."
Residents, finding their taps dry, rushed to buy bottled water but many stores ran out.
"I couldn't find any water to wash the clothes," lamented housewife Amira Ali, 46. "The next few days we're really going to suffer."
A new group of resistance fighters, the Iraqi National Islamic Resistance Movement, said in a videotaped aired on the Al-Jazeera television network that they would battle the occupying troops even if the US-led coalition helps Iraq recover from war.
"This resistance is not a reaction to the American provocations against the Iraqi people or to the shortage of services, as some analysts believe...but to kick out the occupiers as a matter of principle," a man read from a statement.
He sat with several other men holding grenade launchers and Kalashnikov automatic rifles. All had their faces covered with checkered headscarves.
The motivation for the attack on the prison was unclear. Abu Ghraib, where Saddam's regime executed political prisoners and others, is being used by Iraq's US occupiers to house high-security criminals. US troops at and near the prison have been attacked in past months.
Further north, two blazes a kilometres apart raged out of control along the 965km pipeline exporting Iraq's oil to Turkey.
The first fire began on Friday, only two days after oil exports to Turkey resumed, and the second started Saturday night. The fires were 200km northwest of Baghdad.
Coalition spokesperson Charles Heatly said the first blaze appeared to be sabotage. Police commander Brigadier General Ahmed Ibrahim vowed to pursue "a group of conspirators who received money from a particular party" to blow up the pipeline.
Iraqi firefighters watched helplessly as thick, black smoke billowed 400m into the air in the Shrikat District. Their supervisor said fires along the northern pipeline rarely occurred more than once a year. Two major fires in two days was "unheard of and very mysterious", said supervisor Abdul Khaliq Akrum Fatah.
Military spokesperson Colonel Guy Shields said it would take up to two weeks to fix the pipeline.
Iraq has the world's second-largest proven crude reserves, at 112 billion barrels, but its pipelines, pumping stations and oil reservoirs are dilapidated after more than a decade of neglect. Northern Iraq, site of the giant Kirkuk oil fields, accounts for 40% of Iraq's oil production.
Paul Bremer, the US civilian administrator of Iraq, opened the first meeting of a group that will coordinate international donations to Iraqi reconstruction.
"The irony is that Iraq is a rich country that is temporarily poor," he said. "An event such as the explosion on the Kirkuk pipeline costs the Iraqi people $7m a day and hurts the process of reconstruction."
He said the group would prepare a list of needed projects for donors to invest in and expected specific pledges at an October conference in Madrid, Spain.
Meanwhile, US troops shut down a major bomb-making facility near Tikrit, arresting two people. Troops seized C-4 plastic explosives, mortars, automatic rifles and other equipment.
Near Baquoba, 72km north of Baghdad, US forces captured 12 suspected Fedayeen Saddam militia members near a US base. The men were all later released for lack of evidence.
- AP
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