(AFP) \u2013 10 hours ago
\nANKARA \u2014 An explosion ripped through a pipeline carrying oil from Iraq to southern Turkey on Saturday, sparking a fire, the Anatolia news agency reported.
\nThe blast, whose origin remains unknown, hit a section of the pipeline near Midyat town in the southeastern province of Mardin, the agency said.
\nThe pipeline has in the past been targeted by Kurdish insurgents active in the region.
\nFirefighters were called to douse the flames, Anatolia said. An investigation was under way.
\nThe 970-kilometre (600-mile) pipeline runs from Iraq’s northern oil hub of Kirkuk to the port of Ceyhan on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, from where the crude is shipped to world markets by tanker.
\nThe twin conduit, first inaugurated in 1976, carried 167.6 million barrels of oil last year, according to Turkish statistics.
\nRebels from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) fighting a 26-year-campaign for self-rule in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast, have in the past bombed the pipeline several times.
\nThe PKK has significantly stepped up attacks against Turkish targets since May after jailed rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan said he was abandoning efforts for peace with Turkey and the rebels called off a unilateral truce.
\nSome 45,000 people have been killed since the PKK picked up arms in 1984.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(AFP) \u2013 10 hours ago ANKARA \u2014 An explosion ripped through a pipeline carrying oil from Iraq to southern Turkey on Saturday, sparking a fire, the Anatolia news agency reported. The blast, whose origin remains unknown, hit a section of the pipeline near Midyat town in the southeastern province of Mardin, the agency said. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":43479,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[1280],"class_list":["post-20362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey","tag-pkk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}