"Bomb blasts crippled an oil pipeline feeding a refinery near the oil hub of Kirkuk, which many Kurds consider part of their historical homeland. Such attacks, blamed on anti-American insurgents, occur frequently.
President Jalal Talibani of Iraq, speaking in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah, told reporters that the United States would not accept any Turkish military operations in northern Iraq.
In violence across Iraq yesterday, at least 16 people were killed or found dead in apparent sectarian slayings.
In the latest of a series of attacks on Iraq's most powerful Shi'ite political party, gunmen killed the organization's leader in a city south of Baghdad.
Mohammed Hashim, leader of the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council in Iskandariyah, was shot to death as he walked near his home, police said.
Two provincial governors south of Baghdad who were members of the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council were killed in past months and members of the Shi'ite Mahdi Army militia, a rival organization, are suspected in the killings.""Pipeline Attack in Northern Iraq"
"In the latest bout of violence around the northern oil city of Kirkuk, insurgents blew up an oil pipeline, battled a convoy carrying bodyguards of a deputy prime minister and ambushed a police chief, Iraqi officials said on Friday.
The violence on Friday underscored the continued instability of the area surrounding Kirkuk, where some Sunni insurgents fled earlier this year from strongholds in Baghdad and Baquba after increased American troop deployments in central Iraq.
The ambush and fighting, which took place 60 miles south of Kirkuk, left one member of the convoy dead and another wounded.
While American officials continue to highlight recent gains against Sunni extremists in western and central Iraq, there are concerns that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and other homegrown jihadist groups may be in a position to gain power around Kirkuk by exploiting the city’s tense social and political situation. In one example of that influence, the police near Kirkuk recently discovered a couple carrying a marriage license issued by the Islamic State of Iraq, a militant group linked with Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.
[Are you still buying all this "Al-CIA-Duh" shit, reader?
They are LIKE SHIT, too!
"al-Qaeda," in Arabic, means going to the toilet.
And "Al-CIA-Duh" in English is just that -- "Al-CIA-Duh!"
And like shit, they are there every day, and will be there again tomorrow, right?]
In another attack 30 miles west of Kirkuk, gunmen ambushed the convoy carrying the Iraqi police commander of the town of Riyadh, Capt. Abdullah Jabouri, according to the police in nearby Hawija. Captain Jabouri escaped, the police said, but two guards were seriously wounded.
[Gunmen = Blackwaters?]
The pipeline was attacked near the village of Safra, about 40 miles west of Kirkuk. Initial reports suggested that insurgents used an improvised explosive device, said Col. Sadr Adeen Abdullah of the Iraqi Army. The explosion sent plumes of thick black smoke drifting all the way to Kirkuk, he said."
[That's the important thing there, the oil -- saved, of course, for Israel!]
