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Gunmen kidnap 26 from Baghdad shopping area

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published August 1, 2006

BAGHDAD - Gunmen dressed in military fatigues burst into the offices of the Iraqi-American Chamber of Commerce and a nearby mobile phone company Monday, seizing 26 people in a daylight raid in a mostly Shiite area of the capital.

Also Monday, at least 30 people were killed or found dead in political or sectarian violence across the country, police said. They included four Iraqi soldiers killed in a suicide bombing in northern Iraq, the first such attack in the Kurdish-ruled province of Dahuk.

The kidnappings occurred around noon when 15 four-wheel drive vehicles carrying the gunmen pulled into the main shopping area of Karradah, an upscale residential district.

One group entered a mobile phone shop and the other went to the next-door office of the chamber, police Lt. Thair Mahmoud said. The gunmen rounded up 15 staffers and customers from the shop and 11 from the chamber office and drove away with them, he said.

All the victims were believed to be Iraqis. The Iraqi-American Chamber is an independent organization not affiliated with the U.S. government.

The Interior Ministry denied that the kidnappers were police, despite the uniforms.

The raid occurred in the same neighborhood as the abduction two weeks ago of about 30 people, including the Iraqi National Olympic Committee chairman.

A few have been released; those still missing include the committee chairman, Ahmed al-Hijiya. The gunmen who seized the sports officials also wore fatigues and used the same kind of four-wheel drive vehicles as the kidnappers Monday.

Also Monday, gunmen wearing fatigues blocked the car of a millionaire businessman in a Baghdad neighborhood and seized him and his two sons, leaving the man's car in the street, police Lt. Bilal Ali Majeed said.

In other violence Monday, according to police: a Sunni imam, Abdul-Aalem sl-Jumeili, was shot dead late Monday in his home in Fallujah; two mortar shells exploded in a mixed neighborhood in southern Baghdad, killing a civilian; also in the capital, gunmen killed a Health Ministry employee, Maad Jihad, Monday afternoon.

[Last modified August 1, 2006, 02:12:21]