Attacks blamed on loyalists

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraqi officials Sunday blamed loyalists of jailed former leader Saddam Hussein for sabotaging a vital stretch of oil pipeline and blowing up a huge gasoline storage tank in Baghdad.

The attacks that set the north-south oil pipeline ablaze in at least four places threatened to worsen an already dire shortage of gasoline that has angered Iraqi drivers and fomented criticism that the U.S.-led coalition is mismanaging postwar reconstruction.

Billowing fireballs erupted from the pipeline in the al-Mashahda area 15 miles north of Baghdad after insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades into the facility Saturday. Rebel artillery also was cited as the cause of a gasoline tanker explosion later in the day in a southern area of the capital that sent 2.6 million gallons of gasoline up in flames.

Iraq can import more gasoline to make up for the losses, said Oil Ministry spokesman Assim Jihad.

Also Sunday, acting on intelligence gleaned from Hussein’s capture, U.S. troops rounded up dozens of suspected rebels during two days of raids in towns where loyalty to the deposed president remains strong, officials said.

Smashing down doors, troops went house to house in Fallujah, a center of resistance west of Baghdad, early Sunday. Troops of the Army’s 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment blockaded Rawah, near the western border with Syria, the U.S. Army said.

Rawah was put under a nighttime curfew, while the towns of Samarra, 75 miles north of Baghdad, and Jalulah, northwest of Baghdad, were also targeted. Support for Hussein has been strong in all of those areas.

Soldiers arrested 60 Iraqis for questioning, and are seeking more than 100 senior members of Hussein’s Baath Party and insurgents, said Lt. Brian Joyce of the 3rd Armored Cavalry.

In one of the Rawah raids, a 60-year-old woman was killed when soldiers blasted open the reinforced steel door of her home, said regiment commander Lt. Col. Henry Kievenaar.

Meanwhile, members of Iraq’s Governing Council also said they had urged the United Arab Emirates to extradite Hussein’s former information minister.

Council member Sondul Chapouk told journalists here that Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, who was not on the U.S. military’s list of 55 most-wanted figures of the former regime, was wanted on charges that he caused unnecessary civilian deaths by misleading the public about war risks.

Sahaf’s inane characterizations of the war included proclaiming the defeat of coalition forces even as U.S. troops advanced into Baghdad.