BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Gunmen in Iraqi police uniforms snatched up to 100 staff and visitors from a ministry building in Baghdad on Tuesday, sparking a huge manhunt by a government struggling to control increasingly audacious sectarian militias.
Amid new suspicions of police complicity in the latest and biggest mass kidnapping, the interior minister hauled in police chiefs to explain how dozens of gunmen swept into the Higher Education Ministry annex, rounded up those inside, and drove them off in broad daylight toward a Shi'ite militia stronghold.
Women were left behind after having their mobile phones confiscated. One witness said police guards stood by as the gunmen separated minority Sunnis from Shi'ites by checking names on identity documents, although officials and other witnesses said it appeared men from both sects were taken away.
"Some of the men put up a struggle and begged the militants to leave them alone but one of them said 'Don't worry, if you've done nothing wrong we'll let you go'," a local shopkeeper said after the men were put into 40 vehicles in under half an hour.
Some were later freed but up to 50 hostages were still unaccounted for, the government said, renewing assurances that its new, U.S.-trained security forces can bring order. The White House will be watching anxiously as it reviews strategy under mounting domestic pressure to bring U.S. troops home.
So do you still think that "Phased Redeployment" is a good idea? Oh, yeah, less troops in this area is exactly what we need right now. What we need is to use every resource possible to free these hostages. We need to find the groups responsible and destroy that group. These barbaric acts must stop and phased redeployment, i.e., pulling out, i.e., surrender, is not an option!
UPDATE:
Lawhawk here. This incident ended quite differently from many other abductions. The kidnap victims were found alive and safely returned to their loved ones.
In the largest kidnapping since the American-led invasion, armed men in the uniforms of police commandos had raided the Higher Education Ministry in Baghdad yesterday morning and abducted scores of staff and visitors at gunpoint.
Most of those taken were said to be Sunni Muslims, raising fears that this was yet another violent example of the vicious sectarian conflict racking the country. The Interior Ministry said that nine police officers, six of them senior, were later arrested for possible complicity, among them were those in charge of Karadah district, where the Education Ministry is based.
But, last night, the state television channel Iraqiya reported that most of the hostages had been freed in a number of police operations. It quoted an Interior Ministry spokesman as saying that operations were continuing into the early hours to free the remaining hostages.
Al-Furat, a television station controlled by a major Shia political group, said that 25 hostages were still missing. There were no reports on whether there had been any injuries. A presidential security adviser, Wafiq al-Sammarai, however, told the BBC that the rest of the hostages were freed shortly before midnight in Baghdad (2100 GMT).
Technorati: iraq, kidnapping.
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