Separatist Kurdish rebels on Saturday claimed responsibility for an explosion at an oil pipeline linking Iraq with southern Turkey, an agency close to the rebels reported, TehranTimes reported.
The separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) said in a statement that the explosion was an ""act of sabotage,"" the Firat news agency reported on its website.
The twin pipeline linking the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk to Turkey's Mediterranean port of Ceyhan was still ablaze, the report added.
The blast occurred Friday at a section of the pipeline near the town of Midyat in the southeastern province of Mardin.
The ensuing fire was brought under control the same day, the Anatolia news agency reported, quoting local officials.
The PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community, has sabotaged gas and oil pipelines in the past as part of its armed campaign for self-rule.
The Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline, which has a yearly capacity of 70 million tons of crude oil -- has also been sabotaged by insurgents inside Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion of the country in 2003.
In August, a powerful blast disrupted the flow for three weeks through another oil pipeline in Turkey, which carries Azeri oil from Baku to Ceyhan, and the PKK claimed responsibility for the explosion and threatened more attacks on economic targets.
The PKK took up arms for Kurdish self-rule in Turkey's southeast in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed more than 44,000 lives.