Baghdad, Iraq – Iraqi officials accused Iran on Tuesday of kidnapping nine coast guardsmen who were pursuing suspected oil smugglers in disputed territorial waters.
The Iraqi coast guard patrol saw the suspected smugglers stealing diesel fuel from an Iraqi pipeline in the Shatt al Arab waterway, said Mohammed Musabah Waily, the governor of the city of Basra, in southern Iraq. The Iraqis were captured by Iranians as they gave chase, Waily said. Iran denies the incident took place.
Meanwhile, Iraqi authorities said 35 prospective police recruits were apparently captured as they returned to Samarra from the Baghdad police academy Monday. Police said a group of unidentified armed men in several cars stopped a bus on which the recruits were riding.
The incident took place in a hotbed of insurgent activity and near the scene of a U.S. helicopter crash Monday. The copter apparently was shot down by hostile fire, killing two Americans.
The apparent clash between the Iraqi coast guard patrol and Iran boats is a reminder of delicate relations between the two countries, which fought a bloody eight-year war in the 1980s. Portions of the Shatt al Arab waterway separate Iran and Iraq, and it passes the Iranian port of Abadan before emptying into the Persian Gulf.
Abadan is considered a smugglers’ haven where a wide range of products are hustled surreptitiously in and out of Iraq. Oil smugglers have become especially adept at punching holes and then siphoning off pipelines that take Iraqi oil and refined fuels to docking facilities in the waterway and gulf.
Waily, the Basra governor, said the Iraqi patrol chased the smugglers’ boats toward Abadan Monday night. He said Iranian boats subsequently were called out and gunfire ensued. The Iraqi vessel was seized, Waily said. The governor also accused Iran of firing artillery shells into Iraqi territory.
“We informed the government in Baghdad to handle the situation but did not receive any reply from them,” Waily said. He said he heard that one of the nine Iraqis was killed in the gunfire but told a TV reporter he could not confirm it.
A spokeswoman for Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said Tuesday that the country has asked for the release of eight sailors and an officer taken prisoner by Iran. The spokeswoman said none of the nine had been killed. Iranian diplomats in Baghdad, speaking to a Reuters reporter, denied the incident altogether. Iraq’s foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, held a meeting Tuesday with the Iranian diplomats to discuss the issue.
After decades of bitterness, hopes have risen that relations between the two nations will improve after the 2003 overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Iran is controlled by Shiite Muslims, and the new coalition government being formed in Baghdad also is also dominated by Shiites.
