IRAQ: Gunmen kidnapped two Algerian diplomats in Baghdad yesterday in the latest of a series of attacks which has driven many diplomatic staff from the city.
The gunmen, who were in two cars, snatched Algerian mission chief Ali Billaroussi off the street outside a restaurant along with diplomatic attaché Azzedine bin Fadi, police sources said.
Earlier this month Egyptian envoy Ihab el-Sherif was kidnapped by al-Qaeda's Iraq wing, which later said it had killed him and promised more attacks on diplomats.
The Egyptian had been expected to become the first Arab diplomat in Baghdad with the full title of ambassador since the fall of Saddam in 2003, an important symbolic milestone.
Two days after he was kidnapped, gunmen fired on cars carrying the envoys of Pakistan and Bahrain, triggering an exodus of diplomats. Some embassies scaled back their operations over security fears.
Iraq's US-backed government said the attacks were aimed at depriving it of international legitimacy, especially in the wider Arab world, where nearly all countries ruled by Sunnis are seen as distrustful of Iraq's elected Shia leaders. Foreign minister Hoshiyar Zebari has blamed Saddam loyalists leading an Arab Sunni insurgency for much of the violence gripping Iraq, including attacks on diplomats. The Sunni Arab minority in Iraq was dominant under Saddam.
Saddam appeared before Iraq's war crimes tribunal yesterday to hear new accusations against him, according to a broadcast by the Arabic satellite television station Al Arabiya.
The footage showed a tribunal official reading out accusations against Saddam relating to the treatment of the Faili Kurds, a Shia minority among the mostly Sunni Muslim Kurdish population.
Saddam protested several times, interrupting the official. "I am detained and this is a game . . . I am detained by the Iraqi government appointed by the Americans," he said, sitting across a table from judicial officials.
The Iraqi authorities are hoping diplomacy can defuse the insurgency by drawing Sunnis into the political process.But the insurgents have picked their targets carefully.
On Tuesday, gunmen assassinated a Sunni member of the committee drawing up Iraq's new constitution, prompting questions over whether the draft can be completed by an August 15th deadline. Sunnis suspended their work on the committee in response.
Committee chief Humam Hamoudi said he expected the Sunnis' demands for better security could be met, quickly resolving the boycott, and the draft would be ready early.
Meanwhile, seven Iraqis were killed and 11 wounded in a suicide car bombing in Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, yesterday, an interior ministry source said.
Police also said two Iraqi commandos were killed and 10 wounded by a suicide car bomb attack on a checkpoint in the Dora neighbourhood of the capital.
They added that a roadside bomb killed four Iraqi soldiers in Mahawil, south of Baghdad.