50 hostages snatched as Iraq violence escalates

Gunmen wearing commando uniforms of the Shiite-dominated Interior Ministry stormed an Iraqi security company that relied heavily on Sunni ex-military men from the Saddam Hussein regime and abducted 50 hostages.

The ministry denied involvement and called the operation a ”terrorist act”.

Meanwhile, police and the US military reported finding the bodies of 24 men yesterday who were garroted or shot in the head, most of them in an abandoned bus in a tough Baghdad Sunni neighbourhood.

They also reported the deaths of at least 14 others across Iraq, including a US soldier and a Marine.

The Sunni minority, which was dominant in the country under Saddam Hussein, has complained that it is under attack from death squads associated with the Interior Ministry, in charge of Iraq’s police.

Over the past two weeks, since the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra, violence has become increasingly sectarian. Nearly 600 people have been killed since February 22.

Many of the dead in that period were Sunnis, killed at close range after apparently being captured by overwhelming numbers of attackers. The natures of the killings suggested that a well-armed and organised force carried out the attacks.

There have also been repeated attacks against the Shiite-led security forces. Interior Minister Bayan Jabr and one of his assistants may have been targets of assassination attempts yesterday.

A bomb hidden under a parked car detonated as police from Mr Jabr’s protection force were driving through Baghdad, killing two officers and wounding a third. Four bystanders were injured.

Gunmen attacked the convoy of Interior Ministry Undersecretary Hekmet Moussa in west Baghdad, killing two bodyguards and injuring two others.

Neither Mr Jabr nor Mr Moussa were in the convoys.

The sectarian bloodshed has complicated Shiite prime minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari’s bid for a second term. Dr al-Jaafari is opposed by a coalition of Sunni Arab, Kurdish and secular Shiite politicians led by President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd.

The president has openly challenged Dr al-Jaafari’s candidacy on the grounds that he is too divisive and would be unable to form a government representing all of Iraq’s religious and ethnic factions.

There was also great unease over Dr al-Jaafari’s close ties to radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Shiite Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi finally co-signed a presidential decree yesterday to call parliament into session for the first time since the December 15 elections.

The about-face appeared to break a political deadlock that had blocked attempts to begin the process of forming the country’s first permanent post-invasion government.

Nadim al-Jabiri, head of one of seven Shiite parties that make up the United Iraqi Alliance, the largest bloc in parliament, said: “He signed the decree today. I expect the first session to be held on Sunday or by the end of next week at the latest.”

At the same time, Mr Abdul-Mahdi’s change of heart signalled a potentially dangerous and growing internal dispute among the country’s majority Shiite political factions over the nomination of Dr al-Jaafari, who has been criticised for not addressing Sunni complaints about the Interior Ministry.

The al-Rawafid Security Company was attacked after gunmen arrived in a convoy of vehicles, including several white four-wheel-drives and a pick-up truck mounted with a heavy gun, which they used to carry away the hostages, said major Falah al-Mohammedawi.

He said the victims, who included bodyguards, drivers, computer technicians and other employees, did not resist because they believed their abductors were police special forces working for the Interior Ministry.

“It was a terrorist act,” ministry Undersecretary Major General Ahmed al-Khefaji said.

Al-Rawafid, which employs a large number of Saddam Hussein’s former military officers, is one of dozens of companies providing security against the rampant violence in Iraq.

Company headquarters are in Zayouna, a volatile and mixed Sunni-Shiite neighbourhood in east Baghdad. One of its main clients is Iraqna, a mobile phone company owned by Egyptian telecom giant Orascom.

Meanwhile, the US military said an American soldier was killed in a roadside bombing in the north-western city of Tal Afar and a Marine died in enemy action in western Anbar province. Both men were killed on Tuesday.

Their deaths raised to at least 2,303 the number of US military members who have died since the beginning of the war in March 2003. The figure includes seven military civilians.

The discovery of corpses began when an American military patrol found 18 bodies, all men, in a bus on a road between two dangerous and mostly Sunni west Baghdad neighbourhoods.

Most had bruises indicating they were garroted and two were shot. Police believed at least two of the men were foreign Arabs.

Police found the bodies of six more men, four of them strangled and two shot, discarded in other parts of the city.

At least two boys were killed yesterday in a roadside bombing and gunmen stopped a school bus carrying about 25 high-school girls, shooting the driver in front of his terrified passengers. He later died of his injuries.