Gunmen kidnapped two Algerian envoys in Baghdad today, the latest in a series of guerrilla strikes that have driven diplomats from the Iraqi capital.
The gunmen, who were in two cars, snatched Algerian mission chief Ali Billaroussi off the street outside a restaurant along with diplomatic attache Azzedine bin Fadi, police sources said.
Saddam Hussein
Earlier this month Egyptian envoy Ihab el-Sherif was kidnapped by al Qaeda's Iraq wing, which later said it had killed him and vowed more attacks on diplomats in Baghdad.
The Egyptian had been expected to become the first Arab diplomat in Baghdad with the full title of ambassador since the fall of Saddam Hussein 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 are ruled by Sunnis seen as distrustful of Iraq's elected Shi'ite 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 were dominant under Saddam.
Saddam appeared before Iraq's war crimes tribunal today to hear new accusations against him, according to a video tape 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 Shi'ite 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 and their US backers are hoping diplomacy and politics can defuse the insurgency by drawing restive Sunnis into the political process in Iraq and undermining their support from Arabs abroad.
But the insurgents have picked their targets carefully. On Tuesday, gunmen assassinated a Sunni member of the committee drawing up Iraq's new constitution, placing new questions over whether the draft can be completed by an August 15th deadline. Sunnis suspended their work on the committee in response.
Seven Iraqis were killed and 11 were wounded in a suicide car bomb strike in Mahmudiya south of Baghdad today, an Interior Ministry source said.
Police said two Iraqi commandos were killed and ten were wounded by a suicide car bomb strike on a checkpoint in the Dora neighbourhood of the capital.
A roadside bomb killed four Iraqi soldiers in Mahawil south of the capital, police said.