To cap the grim day, three al Qaeda-style seaborne bombs driven by suicide killers attempted to destroy Iraq’s main revenue lifeline, Basra’s offshore oil terminals that have been handling up to 21.6 million barrels a day. Two US sailors were killed and five injured intercepting one of the three lethal speedboats. Two more blew up near the oil rig 7 miles out to sea where two tankers were moored. This was a strategic attack in the direst sense.
DEBKAfile’s Gulf sources report that in recent weeks, gunrunners and smugglers have carved out dozens of illegal anchorages on the Iraqi and Iranian banks of the Shatt al Arb that opens out into the Persian Gulf opposite Basra. Our terror experts detect clear al Qaeda fingerprints in the first bombing of Basra’s oil installations, launched no doubt from the Iranian bank, on the pattern of previous al Qaeda waterborne strikes against the USS Cole in October 2000 and the French tanker Limburg two years later in the Gulf of Aden.
Two American sailors were killed and five were injured when they tried to board one of the intercepted boats. A third US sailor died of his wounds on Sunday.
It was the first maritime attack on Iraqi oil installations since the March 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, but onshore oil pipelines have been targeted repeatedly by saboteurs.
One official described the vessels as "suicide speedboats".
The US military says a team of investigators will try to establish the launching point of the attacks.
An eight-man coalition interception team was approaching one of the boats when it exploded, flipping the coalition boat and killing two crew members, said the US navy's Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet.