Iraq Says Export of Oil Resumed After Airstrike

HAMDAN, Iraq —  Oil exports through Iraq’s main terminal on the Persian Gulf resumed Saturday after a short lull caused by an allied airstrike, the deputy director of Iraq’s Southern Oil Co. said.

Iraq said Friday that allied warplanes bombing southern Iraq destroyed the main communications station that controls the oil pipeline to the Mina al-Bakr terminal.

Kifah Kamel, the deputy director and a senior Oil Ministry official, said engineers were able to get the crude flowing again into the terminal nine miles south of Basra, Iraq’s main port on the Gulf.

“They deliberately attacked the station to stop the oil exports, but we always have alternatives,” Kamel said.

Lt. Cmdr. Ernest Duplessis, spokesman at U.S. Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Fla., confirmed the air raids near Basra, saying three F-16s struck a communications facility and a radio relay station.

U.S. and British aircraft patrol the skies over northern and southern Iraq, enforcing “no-fly” zones set up after the 1991 Persian Gulf War to protect the Kurdish minority and Shiite rebels. Iraq does not recognize the zones and frequently challenges the allied planes, provoking retaliatory strikes.