Baghdad, July 4 (Reuters): Saboteurs attacked the oil pipeline linking Iraq’s northern and southern fields today, a day after they hit another pipeline that cut exports by half, officials and witnesses said.

Columns of smoke were rising hundreds of metres from a section of the strategic pipeline in the Hawijat al-Fallujah area, some 80 km southwest of Baghdad. Industry insiders say northern crude was being secretly pumped through the pipeline for export through two offshore southern terminals.

Northern crude is usually pumped through a pipeline to Turkey, but sabotage has forced Iraq to divert flows south.

Exports from the southern terminals, which account for all of Iraq’s oil exports, fell to 960,000 barrels per day yesterday after saboteurs blew a hole in one of two pipelines feeding them. Iraq used to export around 2 million bpd before the attack on the southern pipeline yesterday.

The attack on the smaller of two pipelines feeding two offshore terminals stopped operations at the Khor al-Amya terminal and restricted flows to the bigger Basra terminal, from where most Iraqi oil is exported.

Flows to tankers at the Basra terminal, formerly known as Mina al-Bakr, were running at 41,000 barrels per hour.

Flows to Basra platforms were running at 70,000 barrels per hour before the attack, which blew a hole in the 42-inch pipeline running through the Faw Peninsula, despite security that was stepped up following similar attacks last month.

Iraqi exports are dependent on the Gulf route. Attacks on the two southern pipelines and other oil installations have stopped exports several times this year.

Senior Iraqi security official Ahmad al-Khafaji said last week that sabotage against oil installations would continue unless neighbouring countries helped stop the infiltration of the foreign militants alleged to be behind the attacks.

Missing marine

An Islamist militant group denied today it had beheaded a US marine missing in Iraq and seen earlier being threatened by his captors with a sword.

Fears for Lebanese-born Corporal Wassef Ali Hassoun had risen after a statement appeared on two Islamist websites yesterday saying the Army of Ansar al-Sunna had decapitated him.

“This statement that claimed to be from us has no basis in truth,” the Army of Ansar al-Sunna said on what it called its official website. However, the group said it believed that killing “such filth brings one closer to God”. There was no way to verify which, if either, of the statements attributed to Ansar al-Sunna was authentic.

To compound the confusion, Hassoun’s kidnapping was first claimed by a group calling itself the Islamic Response Movement, security wing of the 1920 Revolution Brigades. The US military, the Lebanese foreign ministry and Hassoun’s family said they had no evidence he was dead.

His Lebanese father urged his son’s captors to have mercy on him as a Muslim and an Arab.