IRAQ: Their reports could not be independently confirmed. Foreigners cannot enter Iraqi government-held territory, in which Kirkuk, the oil capital of northern Iraq, lies, from the Kurdish free zone to the north.
However, a steady flow of travellers arriving at the border checkpoint of Qushtapa in the Kurdish area yesterday all told substantially the same story, as did the checkpoint's guards, who get regular updates from travellers.
"My uncle is a worker in the oilfields and he says they have mined all the oilfields around Kirkuk," said a taxi-driver who has been plying the route between Kirkuk and Arbil, the largest city in the Kurdish free zone, for several years.
Kirkuk, historically Kurdish but from which many Kurds have been expelled in recent years, accounts for around 800,000 barrels per day of Baghdad's total exports under the UN- sponsored oil-for-food deal of some 1.7 million barrels per day. President Saddam Hussein has said Iraq will not blow up oilfields if it is attacked by US-led forces. Iraqi troops set Kuwaiti oilfields ablaze when they retreated after the 1991 Gulf War.
Like all the people Reuters spoke to at Qushtapa yesterday, the driver, who lives in Kirkuk and returns there every evening, spoke on condition of anonymity. Others also said they believed the oilfields had been mined.
The driver said he had not yet faced any problems crossing the front line between Iraq and the Kurdish area, which has been effectively independent, protected by a no-fly zone, since the Gulf War.
Another Kirkuk resident, who runs a small transport business and crosses the border every day, said that a series of trenches about 50 metres long, 20 metres wide and four or five metres deep had been dug about 15 days ago all around Kirkuk.
"They are full of black oil," he said. He said he could not confirm rumours of oilfields being mined. He also said he believed that a major bridge on the road between Kirkuk and Mosul, the other main city in government-held northern Iraq, had been mined. A guard at the checkpoint said a barge had been moored nearby if the bridge was blown up.