Baghdad faces growing political pres-sures from an insurgency in Iraq’s west-ern Sunni-dominated Anbar province and from a push by regional authorities to claim more of the country’s oil revenues. Fighting between the army and Iraqi Sunni insurgents and the al-Qaida-affili-ated Islamic State of Iraq and Syria(Isil) is intensifying.The violence has caused an exodus of civilians from Anbar,and is destabilising other parts of Iraq.Attack-ers killed 15 government soldiers guard-ing Iraq’s Kirkuk-Ceyhan export pipeline south of the northern city of Mosul on 11 February.The pipeline was not damaged, but the attack highlights the vulnerability of Iraq’s northern oil exports.
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