Fuel truck explodes near Baghdad airport

BAGHDAD — A fuel tanker exploded Sunday near a checkpoint outside of Baghdad International Airport, Iraqi officials said, along a route once known as the world’s deadliest road because of frequent attacks there during the height of the insurgency.

There were conflicting reports about the cause of the explosion, which wounded at least five guards at the checkpoint. No fatalities were reported.

A police official said a bomb attached to the tanker detonated at the checkpoint on the four-lane road leading to the airport. But airport spokesman Kareem al-Timini said the explosion was an accident that was caused when the driver started a fire to cook breakfast on the side of the road.

The explosion caused four other tankers to catch fire, al-Timini and the police official said.

The tanker caught fire at a checkpoint that also leads to Camp Victory, the U.S. military headquarters next to the airport. Al-Timini said the tanker was part of a fuel convoy on its way to the American base.

But Sgt. 1st Class Raymond Piper, a military spokesman, denied the truck was part of a U.S. convoy or that it was headed to Camp Victory. He said it was headed to the airport.

The cause of the fire was under investigation.

“We have conflicting reports on the cause,” Piper said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. “Eyewitness reports said it was due to the driver cooking under the truck.”

The police official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

The road, dubbed “Route Irish” by the U.S. military, connects the fortified Green Zone with the airport. It gained notoriety after the 2003 U.S.-lead invasion because of the frequent attacks along it during the height of the insurgency.

Attacks along the road all but stopped during the past two years as violence declined dramatically in Iraq.

Also Sunday, Iraqi police announced one al-Qaida-linked fugitive was killed and another was arrested in a raid just west of Samarra, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) south from where they made a stunning jailbreak late last month.

The two were among five al-Qaida prisoners who had been sentenced to death to break out of a makeshift jail in Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit. The arrest brings to at least nine the number of prisoners recaptured.

The one fugitive killed Sunday was resisting arrest, a police official said.

That official also spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media.

The escape was an embarrassment for Iraqi authorities as they struggle to upgrade detention facilities before absorbing thousands more inmates from U.S. forces by next year.

An official in the office of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Iraq is looking for a country to accept 36 detained members of an Iranian opposition group.

The announcement was the first clear signal from the government on its plans for the men, who were arrested in a raid on their camp in northern Iraq in July and have been ordered released by Iraq’s chief prosecutor. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

The official said the detainees would not be sent to Iran, where they would likely face arrest, but Iraq is seeking to send them to a third country. The official gave no other details or specific timetable.

The men were moved to Baghdad last week from Diyala Province, northeast of the capital. They are members of a resistance group, the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran, which claims many of the men are severely weakened from a hunger strike to protest their detention.

Iraqi judicial authorities did not pursue charges against the men after their detention.

The group operated for years in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, but nearly 3,500 members have been confined to a camp since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. The U.S. military turned over responsibility for Camp Ashraf to the Iraqis on Jan. 1.

In Baghdad, former Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz and seven other members of Saddam Hussein’s regime went on trial on charges of planning the slaying of a prominent Iraqi opposition figure in Beirut in 1994.

The group, which includes a former intelligence chief, are accused of plotting the killing of Talib al-Suhail in Lebanon’s capital.

Aziz was international face of Saddam’s regime for years. He already has been sentenced to jail terms in other trials for the killings of Iraqi merchants and the forced displacement of Kurds in northern Iraq.

In parliament, lawmakers voted to have former National Security Adviser Mouwaffak al-Rubaie fill the seat of the late Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, who headed the largest Shiite political party in Iraq until his death in August.

Associated Press Writer Chelsea J. Carter contributed to this report.