LONDON (Reuters) - Oil prices struck a fresh record on Thursday, spurred higher by renewed violence in Iraq and fresh evidence that strong demand growth in China and India has not been slowed yet by higher energy costs.

U.S. light crude rose 68 cents to $47.95 a barrel, a new record, and London Brent gained 75 cents to $43.78 a barrel. U.S. prices have set record peaks in all but one of the past 15 trading sessions and are up more than $10.50 a barrel, 28 percent, since the end of June.

Attacks by Iraqi rebels saw mortars kill five at a Najaf police station and a domestic oil pipeline in the north blown up. Mortars also hit the Green Zone compound in Baghdad housing Iraq's interim government.

Rising world oil demand has left little slack in the system to cope with outages in Iraq where Shi'ite militia have said they will target oil infrastructure if U.S. forces do not leave the holy city of Najaf.

Iraq's main southern pipeline from the Basra oilfields has been shut since a sabotage attack on Aug. 9, curbing export flows to about a million barrel daily, half normal rates, through a secondary line.

"Once things return to normal (exports) will be back to normal," Iraq's oil minister Thamir al-Ghadhban told Reuters.

Demand growth in emerging economies China and India has shaken up the oil market this year, intensifying competition for supply with established consuming giants such as the United States.

China's refineries have processed 17.2 percent more crude so far this year than in 2003, the county's State Statistical Bureau said on Thursday. Crude imports to end-July have soared nearly 40 percent from last year.

India's biggest refiner, State-run Indian Oil Corp. Ltd., said it expected India's crude oil imports to rise by 11 percent in 2004/05 as demand rises by nearly 4 percent.

In the United States, which guzzles around a quarter of the world's oil, demand so far this year is up 3.4 percent, stopping inventories building much as rising consumption absorbs extra imports from OPEC producers such Saudi Arabia.

U.S. government data for the week on Wednesday showed commercial crude oil supplies had fallen 1.3 million barrels to 293 million barrels last week, the third straight week of declines.

Nerves were little calmed by OPEC assurances on Wednesday that it had raised output in July to a level that should permit a substantial build-up in world oil stocks in the fourth quarter.