Kirkuk, Iraq, Sept 14, SPA -- Saboteurs blew up a junction where multiple oil pipelines cross the Tigris River in northernIraq on Tuesday, setting off a chain reaction in powergeneration systems that left the entire country withoutpower, officials said. Firefighters struggled to put out the blaze after theattack near Beiji, 250 kilometers (155 miles) north ofBaghdad. Crude oil cascaded down the hillside into theriver. Fire burned atop the water, fueled by the gushingoil. Beiji is the point where several oil pipelines converge,said Lt. Col. Lee Morrison of the U.S. Army Corps ofEngineers. One of them apparently was a domestic pipeline that fed alocal power plant. The explosion set off a fire that meltedcables and led to the power outage, electricity officialssaid. "Beiji is the chokepoint," Morrison said. "It's so easyto hit." The 3 a.m. attack came soon after engineers had completeda two-month project to install two critical valves that hadbeen damaged in an earlier blast.--SPA1455 Local Time 1155 GMT www.spa.gov.sa/201472