Iraq

Pipeline attack breaks relative quiet

BAGHDAD - An unusual quiet continued Friday for the second straight day in Iraq, with U.S. forces and insurgents apparently taking a pause after months of heavy combat.

Still, some violence persisted. In northern Iraq, guerrillas blew up an oil pipeline, and the state-run oil company halted exports as firefighters battled the blaze.

Insurgents have repeatedly attacked oil pipelines and terminals since the fall of Saddam Hussein's government last year. Most of Iraq's oil production comes from fields in southern Iraq near the Kuwaiti border, which are estimated to have the second-largest deposits of oil in the world.

Last month, Shiite Muslim guerrillas loyal to the cleric Muqtada al-Sadr attacked the headquarters of Iraq's Southern Oil Co. in Basra, temporarily disrupting production in the south and causing world oil prices to spike toward $50 per 42-gallon barrel. Pipelines in northern Iraq are generally more vulnerable and have repeatedly been attacked.

Meanwhile, the fate of two French journalists who have been held hostage for two weeks remained unclear as French officials and Muslim clerics continued frantic efforts to obtain their release. On Thursday, two French clerics said they would travel to the Mother of All Battles mosque, a huge shrine in northwest Baghdad, to meet with a Sunni clerics association in an effort to persuade the kidnappers to release the men. The journalists' fate has become a cause celebre in France, which opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and has refused to send its troops here despite more than a year of U.S. appeals.

In videotapes released this week, the journalists said they could be killed at any time if the French government did not repeal its ban on head scarves for Muslim students. The ban is part of a larger prohibition on religious imagery for students of all faiths, but French Muslims have criticized it as an attack on their freedom of religion. France has said it will not repeal the ban.

So far this year, more than 100 foreigners have been kidnapped, along with hundreds of Iraqis.

Both religious and economic considerations appear to be driving the kidnappers, with some companies and governments reportedly paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to win the release of hostages. A cartoon in an Iraqi newspaper this week showed a masked man with an assault rifle standing behind another man wearing a shirt marked "TV" and looking through a camera. The thought bubble over the masked man's head showed a fat bag with a large "$" on it.

The French journalists are apparently being held by hard-core Sunni Muslim insurgents, which may complicate efforts to win their release. Sunni guerrillas in Fallujah and western Iraq appear to be motivated mainly by anger at the United States, not money.

In Kufa, Sadr declared that U.S. forces can never defeat his Mahdi militia in a defiant speech read out to 2,000 supporters during the first Friday prayers since the end of a brutal three-week standoff with American troops.

Sadr aides said the cleric initially planned to deliver the sermon himself from a makeshift pulpit on the street outside the Kufa mosque, which was closed last week after militants pulled out under the peace accord. But he abandoned the idea amid fears it could raise tensions.

Iraqi security forces sealed off roads and fired warning shots near the city in an effort to keep the jostling crowds in check.

"Many, but not all, think that the American army is invincible. But now it's appeared only truth is invincible," Sheik Jaber al-Khafaji, said in a statement read on Sadr's behalf. "America claims to control the world through globalization, but it couldn't do the same with the Mahdi Army."

Meanwhile, in Najaf, dozens of protesters chanted slogans denouncing Sadr and blaming him for the destruction. They also demanded Sadr and his fighters leave the holy city once and for all, fearful of further unrest.

In other developments:

Four Navy commandos have been charged with abusing prisoners in Iraq, including one prisoner who was beaten and later died at Abu Ghraib prison in November 2003, the Navy said Friday. A Navy statement did not identify the sailors.

The U.S. military said two U.S. soldiers were wounded when they were hit by shrapnel when their convoy came under attack while on patrol near Tikrit.

Gunmen abducted four policemen and an Iranian after raiding their hotel room in the southern city of Basra.

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