Khalid Al-Mahdi, Special to Arab News

SANAA, 13 September 2003 — Disgruntled tribesmen yesterday blew up Yemen’s main oil export pipeline, which is operated by a US company, Yemeni officials and tribal sources said. No casualties were reported in the early morning explosion.

The blast set the pipeline operated by the Hunt Oil Company ablaze, starting a huge fire, a tribal source told Arab News.

The source said the pipeline was damaged in the Serwah region of Marib province, some 170 kilometers northeast of the capital Sanaa. Serwah is the stronghold of the powerful Gahm tribe, known for kidnappings of foreigners and bombings.

Government officials in Sanaa said the attackers were believed to belong to the Gahm tribe protesting the arrest of fellow tribesmen by police in Sanaa a month ago.

The officials ruled out the possibility that militants were behind the blast. They said technicians from the Hunt Oil Company were sent to the site to repair the pipeline.

One official told Arab News that the blast caused up to 3,000 barrels of crude oil to leak out. The 420-kilometer-long pipeline carries oil from production fields in Marib, run by Hunt Oil, to the deep sea port of Ras Isa on the Red Sea.

The pipeline has been frequently targeted in recent years by disgruntled tribesmen in dispute with the government and foreign companies.

Marib is the home to one of Yemen’s largest oil fields. It is also known as one of the most lawless parts of the country, where security forces have been chasing suspected Al-Qaeda operatives since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Armed clashes between tribes and government forces are not unusual in Yemen, whose tribes are heavily armed. But the country has also been the scene of several terror attacks by militants in recent years, mainly on Western targets.

The American destroyer USS Cole was rammed by an explosives-laden boat in the southern Yemeni port of Aden in October 2000. Seventeen soldiers were killed in the suicide attack.

Last October, a similar attack targeted the French oil supertanker Limburg in the southeastern Yemeni oil exporting harbor of Al-Dhabba, killing one crew member.

Two months later, a suspected militant shot dead three US missionaries who worked at a Baptist hospital in southern Yemen.