20 released in Baghdad mass kidnapping

The Iraqi prime minister's office said only 45 to 50 people had been kidnapped in a lightning raid on a Baghdad higher education office today, and 20 of them had been released.

Higher Education Minister Abed Theyab initially said as many as 150 had been kidnapped, but his spokesman Basil al-Khatib later put the figure at about 130.

Gunmen dressed as police commandos kidnapped scores of staff and visitors, while at least 82 people were killed or found dead in murders, bombings and clashes nationwide.

"No one can give an exact figure since the numbers of employees in the building was about 70," al-Khatib said.

"We don't know how many of them (employees) were kidnapped in addition to others who were in the building. A man released later told me that between 120 to 130 people were kidnapped," al-Khatib said.

Theyab had ordered all universities to closed until security improvements were made, but al-Khatib later said the directive was rescinded after police and the army promised to increase security at Higher Education Ministry and university buildings.

The Interior Ministry said it arrested five senior police officers in connection with the kidnapping, including the police chief for Karradah, the central Baghdad neighbourhood where the Higher Education Ministry facility was located.

Also taken into custody were the commander of the police brigade in charge of the area and three other officers, spokesman Maj. Gen Jalil Khalaf, said.

In his sole public comments on the kidnapping, Prime Minister Nouri Maliki said the kidnapping was the result of rivalries among armed groups sponsored by different political factions.

"What is happening is not terrorism, but the result of disagreements and conflict between militias belonging to this side or that," Maliki said in televised remarks during a meeting with President Jalal Talabani.

In the day's worst violence, 21 people were killed and 25 injured in a car bombing targeting traffic along a highway linking downtown Baghdad with the Shiite slum of Sadr City, police Lt. Ali Muhssin Said.

Clothes merchant Mohammed Ali, 30, had closed his shop early and was heading home when the bomb blast threw him from his motorcycle.

"I could see people on fire. We tried to rescue some women from a minibus, but they died in our arms," Ali said.

A suicide car bomber struck later in the day near a mosque inside Sadr City, killing at least seven and wounding another 23, some of them seriously, said Lt. Col. Thamer Al-Gharawi, an officer at the local police station.

Theyeb said the kidnapping had been a quick operation taking only about 15 minutes.

"It was a four-story building and the gunmen went to the four stories."

He said the gunmen had at least 20 vehicles, but possibly many more.

Alaa Makki, head of parliament's education committee, said the gunmen had a list of names of those to take, and claimed to be helping the government's anti-corruption body check on security ahead of a planned visit by the US ambassador.

Those kidnapped included the office's deputy general directors, employees, and numerous visitors, he said.

Police and eyewitnesses said the gunmen, who numbered about 80, had closed off streets surrounding the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, Scholarships and Cultural Relations Directorate. The institute is responsible for granting scholarships to Iraqi professors and students wishing to study abroad.

The facility appeared to be an easy target for the kidnappers, whose motives remain unknown but may be linked to the sectarian violence wracking Iraq. Police spokesman Maj. Mahir Hamad said four guards put up no resistance and were unharmed.

Eyewitnesses including a female professor visiting at the time of the kidnappings said the gunmen forced men and women into separate rooms, handcuffed the men, and loaded them aboard pickup trucks.

She said the gunmen, some of them masked, wore blue camouflage uniforms of the type worn by police commandos. Illegal groups, including Shiite militias who have heavily infiltrated the police force, are known to wear stolen or fake police and army uniforms.

The abductions come amid a series of killings and other attacks on Iraqi academics that are robbing Iraq of its brain trust, prompting thousands of professors and researchers to flee to neighbouring countries to escape the country's boiling lawlessness and sectarian hatred.

Recent weeks have seen a university dean and prominent Sunni geologist murdered, bringing the death toll among educators to at least 155 since the war began.

The academics apparently were singled out for their relatively high public stature, vulnerability and known views on controversial issues in a climate of deepening Islamic fundamentalism.

Ali al-Adib, a Shiite lawmaker, demanded US troops be held responsible for allowing the kidnappings to occur.

"There is a political goal behind this grave action," al-Adib said.

The Iraqi Islamic Party, the largest Sunni Muslim group in the country, called the kidnapping "not only a crime but a major political farce."

"How can 50 new vehicles move around in ... the area most heavily controlled by security agencies in the middle of the day?" the party said in a statement.

A spokesman for US forces in Iraq said American troops were ready to help in the hunt for the kidnappers.

"If the reports are true, than this is a terrible crime and we will support all efforts by the Iraqi government to bring these criminals to justice," Lt Col Christopher Garver said.

The abductions came just hours after a US assault on the north-west Baghdad Shiite district of Shula that drew strong condemnation from al-Adib and other Shiite members of parliament. Shula and Sadr City are strongholds of radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, sponsor of one of Iraq's most powerful and feared militias, the Mahdi Army.

They also follow a meeting in Baghdad at which Gen. John Abizaid, head of the US Central Command, confronted al-Maliki over how Iraqi forces would halt the raging violence.

In other violence, police and medical workers said at least 31 Iraqis were killed in overnight clashes in the western city of Ramadi, where US ground troops and warplanes have conducted a series of operations over recent days targeting Sunni insurgents.

The US military said its forces killed 11 insurgents in a series of engagements in Ramadi beginning last night. It said there had been no reports of civilian casualties.

Assailants also killed seven passengers and wounded two others aboard a minivan ambushed near Mandali along the Iranian border, 60 miles east of Baghdad, the Diyala provincial police spokesman's office said.

Also in Diyala, two policemen were killed and seven wounded when their patrol was attacked in a village just outside Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, the provincial police spokesman said.

Three insurgents were blown apart while attempting to plant a roadside bomb last night in a southern suburb of Mosul, 225 miles north-west of Baghdad, police Brig Abdul-Karim Ahmed Khalaf said.

The US military, meanwhile, said an air strike killed three insurgents suspected of being part of a car bomb making ring in Youssifiyah, 12 miles south of Baghdad.