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player ready...In the latest bout of violence around the northern oil city of Kirkuk, insurgents blew up an oil pipeline, battled a convoy carrying bodyguards of a deputy prime minister and ambushed a police chief, Iraqi officials said Friday.
The violence Friday underscored the continued instability of the area surrounding Kirkuk, where some Sunni insurgents fled this year from strongholds in Baghdad and Baqouba after increased U.S. troop deployments in central Iraq.
The deputy prime minister, Barham Saleh, a Kurd, was not in the convoy, according to an Iraqi security official in Kirkuk. But the ambush and fighting, which took place 60 miles south of Kirkuk, left one member of the convoy dead and another wounded, according to an official from Saleh’s office.
The pipeline was attacked near the village of Safra, about 40 miles west of Kirkuk. Initial reports suggested insurgents had used an improvised explosive device, an Iraqi army officer said.
Farther north, one of Kurdistan’s two most powerful leaders warned Turkey that Kurds would defend themselves against an invasion. The statement, by Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, reiterated in stronger terms previous admonitions by Kurdish leaders that Turkish forces should not cross into Iraqi Kurdistan.
A spokesman for the Kurdish Regional Government quoted a statement by Barzani saying, “If the Turkish army attacks Kurdistan, we are ready to defend the Kurdistan Regional Government and protect the democracy that Kurdish people live under.”
Separately, the U.S. military reported the deaths of two soldiers. One died from a “non-combat-related illness” Wednesday after being flown to a hospital in Germany. The other was killed Thursday by an insurgent attack in southern Baghdad.