SANAA: Tribesmen blew up Yemen’s main oil export pipeline on Friday, halting crude flows, local officials said, less than a week after it was repaired.
Yemen’s oil and gas pipelines have been repeatedly sabotaged, often by tribesmen who have feuds with the central government, causing fuel shortages and slashing export earnings for the impoverished country. The last attack was on Oct. 16 and the pipeline was repaired two days later.
The officials said the pipeline, which transports crude from Marib oil fields in central Yemen to Ras Isa on the Red Sea, was blown up in the Wadi Obaida area.
Yemen has said oil flows through the Marib pipeline, one of its main petroleum export routes, at a rate of around 70,000 barrels per day (bpd).
Before the spate of attacks began three years ago, the 270-mile (435-km) pipeline carried around 110,000 barrels per day to Ras Isa.
It was unclear when it would be repaired.
Heavily-armed tribes carry out such assaults to extract concessions from the government such as jobs, settlements of land disputes or the release of relatives from prison.
Most of Yemen’s output is from the Marib-Jawf area in the north, with the rest coming from Masila in the southeast.
Tribesmen blow up Yemeni oil pipeline
Tribesmen blow up Yemeni oil pipeline
Syria says detained senior Daesh jihadist in Damascus
- The arrest came less than two weeks after a December 13 attack killed two US soldiers
DAMASCUS: Syrian authorities have arrested a senior Daesh group official in the Damascus region in a joint operation with a US-led international coalition, a security official said on Wednesday.
Taha Al-Zoubi, also known as Abu Omar Tabiya, an Daesh leader in Damascus, was detained with several of his men, General Ahmad Al-Dalati was reported as saying by state news agency SANA.
The arrest came less than two weeks after a December 13 attack killed two US soldiers and a US civilian that Washington said was carried out by a lone Daesh gunman in central Syria’s Palmyra.
“Our specialized units, in cooperation with the General Intelligence Directorate and and International Coalition forces, carried out a precise security operation targeting” an Daesh hideout, Dalati said.
On December 20, a Syria monitor said that five Daesh members were killed in US strikes in retaliation for the December 13 attack.
It was the first such incident since the overthrow of longtime ruler Bashar Assad in December last year, and Syrian authorities said the perpetrator was a security forces member who was due to be fired for his “extremist Islamist ideas.”
