Gunmen kidnap dozens in Baghdad

Gunmen in military uniforms today kidnapped shopkeepers and bystanders from a major commercial area in Baghdad, while nearly 30 people were killed or found dead elsewhere in Iraq.

It was the second mass abduction in the capital in a month.

The attackers drove up to the busy Sanak area in about 10 sports utility vehicles and began rounding up people from the shops and the streets.

Reports on the number of victims varied. Two police officers and some witnesses said 50 to 70 people were abducted, but a policeman later said initial reports showed that 21 shopowners were seized, along with an undetermined number of bystanders.

The interior ministry declined to give a number, saying it was still under investigation.

Elsewhere in Baghdad, a suicide car bomber slammed into an Iraqi army checkpoint, killing a soldier and a civilian and wounding nine other people.

Police in the mostly Shiite Wasit province south-east of Baghdad also found 17 bullet-riddled bodies, bound, blindfolded and bearing signs of torture, including five that were dumped in a flour mill in the town of Wahda.

Three other bodies, including one that was beheaded, were found elsewhere in a volatile area south-west of the capital.

The violence underscores the difficulties the Iraqi government faces after it unveiled a plan to assume responsibility for security in Baghdad, allowing US forces to move to the periphery of the capital by early next year.

Senator John McCain said the United States should deploy 15,000 to 30,000 more troops to control the sectarian violence and give moderates within the democratically-elected government the stability they need to move Iraq in the right direction.

“The American people are disappointed and frustrated with the Iraq war, but they want us to succeed if there’s any way to do that,” said McCain, a 2008 presidential hopeful.

He was speaking at a news conference with the other legislators at the US Embassy in Baghdad’s heavily-fortified Green Zone.

Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno, meanwhile, took over the command of the Multi-National Corps-Iraq from Lieutenant General Peter Chiarelli.

The new number-two general in Iraq said the main challenges in Baghdad were sectarian violence and car bombs and he stressed the effort to end the attacks needed to be multi-pronged.

“This is not just a military solution,” he told reporters after an outdoor handover ceremony in front of one of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces at Camp Victory. “It’s a combination of diplomatic, economic and military programmes that have to move forward in Baghdad.”

The Sanak area, one of the capital’s main commercial districts, has shops selling car parts, agricultural equipment and the small power generators that are ubiquitous in Baghdad because of severe power shortages.

The shops are owned by a mix of Shiites, Sunnis and others, and it was not immediately clear why the area was targeted, but suspicion fell on militias, which are believed to have infiltrated police forces and killed hundreds in sectarian violence, personal vendettas and kidnappings for ransom.

On November 14, suspected Shiite militiamen in interior ministry commando uniforms abducted scores of men from an office that handles academic grants and exchanges for the Higher Education, which is predominantly Sunni Arab.

Several of those kidnap victims were apparently later released, although there were conflicting accounts about how many people were involved.

Many victims of other past kidnappings have been found among the dozens of bullet-riddled bodies that turn up daily on the streets of Baghdad.

Officers were today on high alert, stepping up security after receiving tips that militants were moving car bombs into the Shiite Sadr City slum.

A car bomb killed two policemen who were trying to defuse it and wounded four civilians late yesterday in the sprawling district, police Captain Mohammed Ismail said. He said explosives experts successfully defused a second car bomb in the same area.

The capital has seen a series of attacks since a February 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra set off a cycle of retaliatory violence between the majority sect and disaffected Sunnis, who were dominant under Saddam Hussein but lost power with his removal.

In other violence reported today by police gunmen stormed a boys’ school in south-western Baghdad, killing a Shiite guard. Gunmen also killed two people in separate attacks north-east of the capital and a police officer was shot to death in the northern city of Mosul.

A roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi army patrol exploded in Musayyib, 40 miles south of Baghdad, killing one soldier, while another struck a joint patrol of police and interior commandos, killing two commandos and wounding one policeman in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad.