BAGHDAD, 23 October 2003 — A US general said yesterday groups linked to Al-Qaeda might be behind major bombings in Iraq, although no confirmed members of Osama Bin Laden’s network had been caught.

Guerrillas kept up attacks on US forces and an Oil Ministry source acknowledged this week’s pipeline explosion was the most destructive carried out by saboteurs to date.

Violence and sabotage hampering postwar reconstruction efforts provide a sobering backdrop to an international donors’ conference on Iraq that starts in Madrid today.

Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of US ground forces in Iraq, said Al Qaeda-linked groups, including Ansar Al-Islam, were operating in Iraq.

“We believe that some of the operations that have been conducted recently... in terms of bombings are linked to those organizations,” Sanchez told a news conference.

He said US forces had seized members of Ansar Al-Islam, which used to have bases in northern Iraq, and other groups. “We know there are organizations that have links back to Al-Qaeda. We do not have any confirmed Al-Qaeda operatives actually in custody at this point,” Sanchez said.

The United States said before the war that toppled Iraqi President Saddam Hussein that Al-Qaeda, which Washington blames for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on US cities, had links with Baghdad, but it has not substantiated the charge. Bombers have targeted the Jordanian and Turkish embassies, UN headquarters, a hotel used by Iraqi politicians, and an Iraqi police station in recent months.

Many Iraqis say resentment of the US-led occupation is fueling attacks on US troops, especially in Saddam’s tribal heartland in Sunni Muslim towns north and west of Baghdad. A roadside bomb wrecked a US military vehicle in the flashpoint town of Falluja, west of the capital, yesterday but the military could not say if there had been US casualties.

Television footage showed a Humvee on fire in a ditch by a main road near the town. Residents were pouring petrol at the blaze, shouting “Allah-O-Akbar (God is great)”. Falluja has been the scene of many attacks by guerrillas who have killed 104 US troops in Iraq since President George W. Bush declared major combat over on May 1.

Earlier, a bomb exploded in a road tunnel in central Baghdad, hitting a Humvee and wounding two US soldiers. Sanchez said guerrilla attacks now averaged 20 to 25 a day, but declared that the struggle to improve security and economic growth to stabilize postwar Iraq was seeing gains.

“I believe progress is being made but we need to accelerate it,” he said.

Sanchez said a four-hour overnight curfew in Baghdad would be lifted for the holy Muslim month of Ramadan. Curfews in other parts of Iraq might also be suspended.

Baghdad is under curfew from midnight to 4:00 a.m. Ramadan, when Muslims fast from dawn to dusk, will start on Sunday or Monday, depending on the sighting of the new moon.

Apart from attacking US troops, guerrillas have been trying to cripple Iraq’s crucial oil industry. An Oil Ministry source said Iraq aimed to resume exports from its crude oil pipeline to Turkey by early November, but sabotage threatened to undermine Baghdad’s best efforts.

“The plan is to resume Kirkuk exports in the first week of November after storing five million barrels of oil in Turkey,” the source said. “But these are just plans. I don’t think the pipeline can function in the foreseeable future because the sabotage will just continue.”

The source said Tuesday’s sabotage blast that hit a cluster of four pipelines, just south of Baiji, Iraq’s biggest oil refinery, was the most worrying attack so far.

“This was a terrible blast. It hit four pipelines and it was the first time we actually witnessed parts of a pipeline being blown up completely,” he said. The blast tore through two lines to Baghdad’s vital Daura refinery, which was already taking diverted crude oil from the south. “The Daura refinery is now starved of oil,” the source said. “It’s getting about 30 percent of its usual supplies.”