Anti-US guerrillas trying to discredit Iraq's new interim government killed an Iraqi oil official and attacked foreign contractors today after strangling the country's oil export lifeline.
With the formal end to US-led occupation only two weeks away, the shadowy insurgents have intensified assassinations and suicide bombings to prove that the interim government cannot hope to assert control after the handover.
In the latest attack on Iraq's oil industry, saboteurs blew a hole in one of Iraq's two southern oil export pipelines on today for the second time in 48 hours, an Iraqi oil source said. The source said the damage was "fairly big".
US Deputy Secretary of Defense Mr Paul Wolfowitz, on a visit to Iraq previously shrouded in secrecy, met interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and the defence and interior ministers.
"The meeting discussed the strategy of the Iraqi government to deal with important and serious issues of security, the economy and the political process," a US statement said, without elaborating.
Mr Wolfowitz, a powerful advocate of last year's US-led invasion, escaped a guerrilla rocket attack on his hotel during an earlier visit to Baghdad in October.
A rocket attack on a US base near Balad, north of Baghdad, today killed two US soldiers and wounded at least 21 people, an American army statement said.