Gunmen kidnap 25 people at Baghdad company

BAGHDAD - Gunmen wearing uniforms of Iraqi security forces kidnapped 25 people from an office in central Baghdad in broad daylight yesterday, police said.

The gunmen pulled up in 15 four-wheel-drive vehicles and kidnapped employees and customers at the office on a street in Arasat, once a thriving commercial district that has seen many businesses close due to violence ravaging the country.

Some witnesses said the offices were those of the Iraqi-American Chamber of Commerce, while others said they belonged to a commercial company.

"I was on the first floor of the Iraqi-American Chamber of Commerce and they took all the men downstairs. They were in camouflage army uniforms. They handcuffed the men and blindfolded them," said a witness who asked not to be named.

"Me and five others were left behind because all the cars were full."

Police said among those kidnapped were the head of the chamber of commerce and 11 of his employees.

US President George W Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki have agreed to send thousands more troop to tackle sectarian and insurgent violence in Baghdad, where criminal gangs and kidnappers feed off the instability.

Maliki has already launched a crackdown but it has failed to ease communal violence which has raised fears of civil war.

More and more neighbourhoods are being carved up along sectarian lines in the capital, once a melting pot of Iraq's sects and ethnic groups. And a growing number of shops and businesses have closed, including many on Arasat Road.

Underscoring concerns over sectarian strife, Iraqi Defence Minister General Abdel Qader Jassim and General Babaaaker Zebari, general commander of joint forces, urged army personnel and civilian employees of the military to avoid sectarianism.

"Joining the military and implementing national obligations need loyalty and people should discard party, sectarian and racial affiliations and stay away from politicising the army," they said in a speech released on Monday.

In typical bloodshed in Baghdad, gunmen killed Fakhri Salman, a brigadier in the Iraqi National Intelligence Service, said an Interior Ministry source.

Maad Jihad, an advisor to the health minister, was also killed in the Mansour district, the source said.

- REUTERS