Flames lit up the nighttime desert sky from the direction of Iraq's petroleum center Basra, and U.S. and British forces entering southern Iraq saw oil wells on fire.
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld could not confirm any sabotage seen Thursday, saying three or four oil wells may have been set afire. It was not immediately clear how the fires started.
The Pentagon, which claimed Wednesday that Iraq has booby-trapped oil wells so one person could blow them up, insists it will try to secure oil fields quickly to prevent Saddam's forces from damaging the nation's 1,685 wells.
In Kuwait, some 13 kilometers south of the Iraqi border, fires could be seen flickering on the horizon. Reporters with U.S. Marines crossing into Iraq from Kuwait saw burning oil wells that sent up a black cloud under a nearly full moon.
A battalion commander with a U.S. Marine unit in northern Kuwait told The Associated Press that "three oil wells have been torched."
The Arab satellite television channel Al-Arabiya reported that fires erupted in Iraq's valuable Rumeila South field some 80 kilometers west of Basra and just north of the Kuwaiti border. Rumeila South is one of Iraq's largest fields, with more than 5 billion barrels in reserves.
Iraqi Oil Minister Amir Muhammed Rasheed denied reports on Thursday that oil wells near the southern Iraqi city of Basra were on fire. "This report that was given to you is a film from the American gangs and is misleading and prejudiced," Rasheed told Reuters in a statement from his Baghdad office.
Mussab Al-Dujayli, the head of crude sales at Iraq's state oil monopoly, said he could not comment on the reported fires. "I hope you understand my position," he said by phone from his home in Baghdad.
Al-Dujayli confirmed that Iraq has stopped exporting oil from its Persian Gulf port of Mina al-Bakr, the destination for much of the oil produced near Basra. (Albawaba.com)
© 2003 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
