News - Middle East: The United States Navy planted explosives under the Nord Stream gas pipelines in a covert sea operation last year, renowned American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has revealed. 

In a detailed report published in his blog on Wednesday, Hersh, citing his own investigation into the September sabotage, claimed that the bombing of the Nord Stream underwater gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea was ordered by the White House and carried out by the CIA with the help of the US Navy.

Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist known for his reporting on US crimes during the wars in Vietnam and the Middle East, said that US Navy deep-sea divers planted the high-powered C4 explosives under the gas pipelines under the guise of NATO naval exercises.

According to his reporting, the Norwegian military then activated the explosives remotely when they received the relevant order.

Two of the pipelines, known collectively as Nord Stream 1, had been providing Germany and much of Western Europe with cheap Russian natural gas for more than a decade. A second pair of pipelines, known as Nord Stream 2, had been built but were not yet operational.

Back on September 26, three huge gas leaks, preceded by a series of explosions, occurred on the pipelines. The powerful blasts, according to Moscow, knocked out three of the four strings of the Nord Stream network off the coast of the Danish island of Bornholm.