50 kidnapped by gunmen in Baghdad raid
On a day marred by violence and explosions, the bodies of 24 slain men are also discovered.
By wire services
Published March 9, 2006
BAGHDAD - In one of the most audacious kidnappings since the U.S. invasion, a group of about 50 people was abducted in a Baghdad raid Wednesday by gunmen wearing uniforms of a police paramilitary unit, Iraqi officials and witnesses said.
The raid took place hours after the discovery in Baghdad of at least 24 bodies, all victims of execution-style slayings, Iraqi and U.S. officials said.
The events threatened to aggravate Iraq's sectarian tensions, which have been at a high pitch since the bombing last month of a major Shiite shrine set off an eruption of violence that left hundreds dead before easing a few days later. Since then, the country has feared a slide toward full-blown civil war.
In the abduction, the gunmen stormed a private Sunni Arab-owned security company during the afternoon in a busy middle-class area of eastern Baghdad, marching out with the employees. They then sped off in white pickups, the kind used by Shiite-led Interior Ministry police commandos, according to witnesses.
The workers, among them security guards and administrators, did not resist because they assumed their abductors were government forces on a legitimate operation, the witnesses said.
The government denied any involvement, and it was not clear who carried out the raid.
Sunni Arab leaders have accused the Shiite-led government, particularly the police forces under the auspices of the Interior Ministry, of operating death squads in a dirty war against Sunni Arabs.
Shiite leaders contend that in most cases antigovernment insurgents and other criminals have committed crimes masquerading as government forces using stolen uniforms and vehicles.
Hours before the abductions, in a series of ghoulish discoveries beginning Tuesday night, 24 bodies, most of them apparently garroted, were uncovered over a 15-hour period in five locations.
The bodies amounted to one of the highest single-day tallies in Baghdad for execution-style killings since the U.S. invasion.
Though the bodies were stripped of identification, authorities have often discovered sectarian motivation for such executions in the past, and the sudden appearance of so many bodies suggested that the violent expression of rage that sprung from the shrine bombing had not so much dissipated as gone underground.
The target of the abductions also pointed to sectarian rivalries. The gunmen stormed the private security company, al-Rawafid Security Co., and seized computer equipment, documents and a safe full of cash, police officials and witnesses said.
Al-Rawafid Security Co. is owned by a relative of Sheik Ghazi al-Yawer, one of Iraq's two vice presidents and a Sunni Arab, according to a company employee.
AMERICAN DEATHS: The U.S. military said an American soldier was killed in a roadside bombing in the northwestern city of Tal Afar and a Marine died in enemy action in western Anbar province. Both men were killed Tuesday.
POLITICAL STALEMATE MAY END: Shiite Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi co-signed a presidential decree on Wednesday to call Parliament into session for the first time since the Dec. 15 elections. The about-face appeared to break a political deadlock that had blocked attempts to form the country's first permanent, post-invasion government.
Information from the Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and the Washington Post was used in this report.