So many incidents have happened in Iraq in the past day that I thought I’d do a summary.
Fallujah rebels killed 12 and wounded 10 Fallujah Brigade soliers in a mortar attack today. The Fallujah Brigade is encamped outside Fallujah, which is ruled by the rebels. Middle East Online is reporting US tanks massing east of Fallujah, but their purpose is unclear. Apparently some Fallujah Iraqis are saying that they’ve asked for “safe passage” through Fallujah.
Saboteurs struck two oil pipelines and a US convoy was attacked in Baghdad:
Elsewhere, Iraqi fighters ambushed a US military convoy in Baghdad and blew up another fuel line. The ambush took place on a road in the northwestern Baghdad neighborhood of Al-Khadra.
Meanwhile, saboteurs ruptured overnight an oil pipeline linking Iraq’s largest fuel refinery at Baiji, 200 kilometres north of Baghdad, to a power station, the electricity ministry said, according to AFP.
The attack shut down the400 -megawatt power station in Baiji and caused a huge blackout in the town, the ministry said in a statement.
In a related development, a portion of the Kirkuk-Turkey oil pipeline was blown up, an Iraqi security chief in northern Iraq told AFP. The pipeline was still on fire Wednesday afternoon, said the fire chief for the Northern Oil Company, Jumaa Ahmad.
Six Polish soldiers were killed when they were attacked with mortars while defusing munitions.
An explosion that killed six soldiers serving with Polish-led forces in Iraq on Tuesday was probably caused by a mortar attack, Polish Deputy Defence Minister Janusz Zemke said on Wednesday.
“Everything leads us to believe that it was a mortar attack,” Zemke told Poland’s Trojka radio.
“Probably three mortar shells exploded near the place where the soldiers were,” he said. “And that’s what caused the explosion.”
Meanwhile, Ayatollah Sistani’s faction of Shi`ites won big in the Iraqi Power Game when their demands for the wording of the UN resolution passed yesterday were satisfied while the Kurdish demands were denied. The Kurdish leaders are furious and have threatened to pull out of the Game entirely.