Russia Jets Bomb Georgia Oil Pipeline

RUSTAVI, Georgia — Russian jets targeted a key oil pipeline in Georgia yesterday with more than 50 missiles in a raid that raised fears that the conflict would tighten Moscow's stranglehold on Europe's energy supplies.

Deep craters pockmarked the landscape south of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, in a Y-shaped pattern straddling the British-operated pipeline. The attack left two deep holes less than 100 yards either side of a pressure vent on the pipeline. Shrapnel of highly engineered munitions littered the area, but there was no visible damage to the pipeline.

Its vulnerability was summed up by a yellow hazard sign next to the vent warning against digging in the area. Anyone venturing on to the site is warned against smoking.

Local police recorded 51 strikes. "I have no doubt they wanted to target the pipeline, there is nothing else here," a policeman who witnessed the attack, Giorgi Abrahamisvili, said. "It was terribly intense, the smell of cordite spread everywhere. I had to abandon my car and hide in a ditch but the jets weren't interested in other targets."

BP operates the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which transports 1% of the world's oil needs, or one million barrels a day from Azerbaijan to the Mediterranean. A spokesman played down the impact of the strike, pointing out that pumping was suspended last week because of a terrorist attack in Turkey. "At the moment the pipeline is not running at any capacity, because there was a fire," the spokesman said.

Georgia is a crucial link in a three-country energy corridor, vital to western Europe's oil and gas supply. The pounds $3.8 billion pipeline is the only major conduit for Central Asian resources not under Russian control.

The Kremlin under Prime Minister Putin used gas exports to Europe as a tool of foreign policy. Reduced supplies to eastern Europe forced Russia's neighbors to curtail pro-western ambitions. Western Europe, especially Germany, is dangerously vulnerable to reduced supplies from Russia at times of political tension.

Georgian politicians accused Russia of waging the war to achieve wider strategic goals. Moscow has portrayed it as an intervention on behalf of beleaguered renegade enclaves.

"They need control of energy routes," President Saakashvili of Georgia said. "They need sea ports. They need transportation infrastructure. And primarily, they want to get rid of us."