Gunmen kidnap 50 Baghdad transport workers

Iraqi women stand in front of one of the Baghdad transport companies, from where gunmen abducted up to 50 employees. Picture / Reuters

BAGHDAD - Gunmen killed at least 11 college students after stopping a bus in Baghdad and kidnapped up to 50 transport company employees in the Iraqi capital on Monday, Interior Ministry sources said.

The violence occurred as a political crisis deepened over the failure of Iraqi leaders to fill the key defence and interior posts in the new national unity government headed by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

The sources said the bus was carrying 20 college students in Baghdad's Dora district. Police had no immediate information on the attack, which took place a day after 24 people, mostly teenage students, were dragged from vehicles in Iraq and killed.

The sources said the seizure of the transport company employees occurred in broad daylight and that the kidnappers were dressed in police uniforms.

Police said the abductions appeared to be a coordinated operation against firms offering transport to Syria and Jordan.

"It took them about five minutes to take people away. One, two, three, four - one after another," said witness Hamza Ali, adding the gunmen were armed with rifles and grenades and had arrived in 10 pick-up trucks.

Businesses in Iraq have been hit by kidnappers for various reasons such as ransoms, revenge killings and religious rivalry.

Hours after the transport company employees were seized, gunmen in police uniforms raided houses in Baghdad's Shaab district and kidnapped seven people, police sources said.

Key posts

Iraq's political blocs had been expected to agree on names to be presented to parliament on Sunday to fill the defence and interior posts but a deal fell through and the assembly session was postponed, presenting Maliki with a setback.

The politically sensitive posts have been vacant since his government was sworn in on May 20. Political sources said Maliki's rivals in his Shi'ite Alliance had objected to his choice for interior minister.

Maliki faces the tough task of showing Iraqis he still means business about stabilising the country while he battles to sort out the posts, which go to the heart of Iraq's woes.

Sectarian violence has mounted in the country since the February bombing of a Shi'ite Muslim shrine touched off a wave of revenge killings that sparked widespread fears of civil war.

The United States, which has 130,000 troops in Iraq, hopes Maliki's coalition of majority Shi'ites and minority Sunnis and Kurds will be able to defuse the violence. Insurgents draw support from the Sunni community, dominant under Saddam Hussein.

Key to quelling the violence will be the naming of non-sectarian interior and defence ministers who can deal with the situation.

The killings and abductions in Baghdad showed how far Maliki has to go to establish law and order, three years after a US-led invasion toppled Saddam.

Last week, Maliki ordered a state of emergency in the southern city of Basra to crack down on gangs and feuding Shi'ite factions threatening oil exports vital to reviving the economy and boosting employment.

Basra challenge

But he was quickly challenged in Iraq's second city, where residents say militia hit squads and armed gangs have gained enormous power.

A car bomb killed at least 28 people in Basra on Saturday and Sunni politicians accused Maliki's security forces of killing nine unarmed worshippers at a mosque hours later. Police said they were fired on from the mosque.

A Baghdad court sentenced an Iraqi man to life imprisonment on Monday in connection with the 2004 abduction and killing of Iraqi-British aid worker Margaret Hassan.

More than 200 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq.

A court official said Mustafa Salman, charged with aiding and abetting the kidnappers, was sentenced a few hours after the trial started. Two other defendants were freed.

Hassan, an Iraqi-British national who had lived in Iraq for more than three decades after marrying an Iraqi engineer, was head of the Iraqi operation of the CARE International charity.

She was abducted while travelling to work in Baghdad in October 2004, and was killed about a month later after appealing in video messages made by her abductors for British forces to withdraw from Iraq. No group has claimed responsibility.

In Baghdad's heavily guarded Green Zone, Saddam and seven co-accused returned to court to face charges of crimes against humanity in the killings of 149 Shi'ites in the early 1980s.

His defence team sought to tear a hole in the case against him, saying 10 people out of 148 said to have been killed after an attempt on his life were still alive 24 years later.

- REUTERS