The Syrian government and anti-government activists on Thursday said that one of its oil pipelines near the restive city of Homs was blown up.
Video footage uploaded to the Internet showed black smoke coming from the area.
Syrian state-run media said the incident was caused by an armed terrorist group in an attempt to sabotage some of the country’s oil production. The pipeline carries oil from eastern Syria to the refinery in Homs.
The Local Coordination Committees (LCC), an activist group based in the country, said the pipeline was “blown up by security forces and the regime’s army,” but did not elaborate.
The Syrian government has commonly referred to armed terrorist groups, sometimes backed by foreign powers, as a major source of disruption in the country.
Officials told state media that authorities extinguished the fire and stopped pumping oil through the pipeline before shifting to other pipes.
In the video that was posted, an unnamed narrator could be heard saying that “the burning of one of the pipelines by Assad’s Shabiha [state-backed militia], using a mortar rocket in Bab Amro neighborhood on Dec. 8, 2011 and the houses around it are burning,” according to Al-Jazeera television.
“The pipeline was attacked by the government forces so they can accuse the residents of doing it, so they can bomb Baba Amro entirely,” the man continued.
The narrator identified a black, armored vehicle near the pipe fire as belonging to Syria’s Shabiha militia, who have been accused of committing atrocities in the past. The man said that the vehicle was responsible for attacking the pipeline.
Homs has been hit particularly hard by security forces, according to the LCC. It also said that dozens are killed in the flashpoint city every day and it is a place “where horrifying crimes and abuses have been committed.”
Reports coming from inside Syria cannot be easily verified due to the country’s ban on foreign media.
At the same time, more protests were staged in several parts of the country against the government of Bashar al-Assad, who gave his first interview on Wednesday with foreign media. In the ABC interview, he denied claims that his security forces were responsible for the deaths of civilians.
The LCC report that at least 100 people have been killed since the weekend, saying that security forces were responsible for “indiscriminate gunfire” and using bombs or other heavy weapons in Idlib Province and in Damascus.
Last week, the United Nations gave an estimate that more than 4,000 have died since the crackdown began in March.
