KUWAIT CITY (AP) — Firefighters attacking blazes at oil wells in southern Iraq say they’ve found telltale signs the valuable field was sabotaged. But it appears Iraqi troops may have disobeyed orders to blow up the wells or prepared explosives that were too weak to do serious damage.
It took Kuwaiti firefighters only 15 minutes and two water cannon Monday to snuff out the first fire quenched so far at a booby-trapped Iraqi oil well.
Even though fighting nearby forced some civilian firefighters to clear out of the region Monday, Kuwait’s senior firefighter, Aisa Bouyabes, said he believes his team and others can douse the six remaining blazes in Iraq’s Rumeila South oil field within two weeks.
Upon inspecting damaged well heads at several blast sites just across Kuwait’s border with Iraq, the team discovered a telltale pair of black wires snaking away from each one.
“These are the same wires that were used in Kuwait to blow up our wells — the same method exactly. I’ve seen it before. I inspected the wells in Kuwait immediately after the liberation,” Bouyabes said by telephone from northern Kuwait.
Saddam Hussein’s troops sabotaged more than 700 well heads in Kuwait’s oil fields as they retreated from the emirate in the closing days of the 1991 Gulf War.