Children shot dead after bomb blast in Baghdad

BAGHDAD - Four schoolchildren were killed by gunfire in Baghdad last night, shortly after a roadside bomb ripped through a United States military vehicle.

Some witnesses said the children, all aged around 12, were shot dead by US troops who had opened fire randomly after the blast on Canal St in eastern Baghdad.

This could not be independently confirmed and the US military had no immediate word on the incident.

"I saw a child lying on the street with a bullet hole in his neck and another in his side," said a driver who witnessed the incident. "He had his schoolbag on his back. Some 15 minutes later his relatives came and took his body away."

The targeted Humvee was part of a military convoy driving through the street.

Two soldiers in the Humvee were evacuated from the scene by military medics, they said.

The incident followed a terrorist attack yesterday on a vital offshore oil terminal in the Basra region and capped a bloody day for Iraq, in which dozens of people were killed in rocket, bomb and mortar attacks.

Five US soldiers were among the dead in the latest spate of violence in the worst month for US-led forces since Saddam Hussein's fall.

The attack at Basra marks a dangerous new tactic in the continuing assault on Iraq's capacity to produce and export oil, which is essential to any economic recovery.

The assault, involving suicide insurgents and three boats, was reminiscent of the devastating suicide mission against the USS Cole in 2000.

At least two US naval crew were killed and four more injured.

The Basra terminal, 10km off-shore, is one of only two facilities capable of handling Iraqi crude for export. No damage was reported, but the terminal, in the form of a large oil platform, was immediately shut down by the authorities.

Two of the terrorist boats exploded alongside ships tied up at the terminal, said a spokesman for the British military, which controls Basra nearby. It is understood there was no British involvement. US, Australian and British forces patrol the Gulf off Iraq.

The Gulf attacks were the first maritime assaults on Iraq's oil industry. Until now insurgents have been attacking pipelines in the north and south of the country, causing huge disruption at times.

In October 2000, an explosives-laden boat rammed the USS Cole, a destroyer, killing 17 American sailors. In October 2002, a boat rammed a French oil tanker, also off the coast of Yemen and exploded, killing one crewman.

Both those attacks were blamed on Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda.

British officials responsible for the area around Basra, where suicide car bombers killed 74 people last week, said they were still gathering details of the attacks on a terminal responsible for most of Iraq's 1.9 million barrels a day of exports.

They would have struck at the heart of Iraqi hopes for reconstruction and future prosperity.

Jitters on the international markets following previous attacks on its oil infrastructure such as the incident which closed Iraq's pipeline to Turkey last August, sending the price of crude upwards, highlight the commodity's vital importance to Iraq and Iraq's potential importance in the global marketplace.

With proven crude reserves of 112 billion barrels, Iraq is potentially the world's second largest oil producer.

One of the priorities for the Coalition Provisional Authority has been to restore the battered oil industry as a major asset for the country.

In one of the worst incidents, at least 13 Iraqis were killed and 30 wounded when mortar bombs struck a busy market in the Shiite Muslim area of Sadr City in Baghdad, witnesses and hospital sources said.

Angry residents of Sadr City - a powerbase of rebel Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whom US-led forces have vowed to kill or capture - held up bloodied human remains to television cameras and said US helicopters had fired at the market.

They put a sign on a dead donkey saying: "This is Bush."

Brigadier-General Mark Kimmit, top US military spokesman in Iraq, denied US involvement and said those responsible might have been aiming at an old cigarette factory nearby that was used by US-led forces.

Fourteen Iraqis were killed when a bus, travelling to Baghdad just ahead of a convoy of six US military vehicles, was hit by a roadside bomb.

A US military spokesman said the five US soldiers were killed in a guerrilla rocket attack on their base just north of Baghdad.

Crucial terminal

* The Basra terminal is one of only two facilities capable of handling Iraqi crude for export.

* It was not damaged in the attack but it was closed for several hours and workers were evacuated.

* Iraq is almost completely dependent on the terminal to export around 1.9 million barrels a day.

* Two oil tankers had been scheduled to load two million barrels each at the terminal around the time of the attacks.

* Iraq has exported only about 14 million barrels through the northern pipeline since the war last year.

- INDEPENDENT, REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq