IRAQ: Gunmen in police uniforms staged a brazen daylight raid on bus stations in central Baghdad yesterday, kidnapping at least 50 people, including would-be travellers, merchants and vendors selling tea and sandwiches.
The operation was a direct challenge to the prime minister's efforts to restore security in the capital.
The victims were herded into more than a dozen vehicles, according to witnesses and officials. It was not known who was behind the attack, but the interior ministry denied that police were involved.
The attackers arrived at mid-morning and began randomly grabbing people in the shabby business district, where several transportation companies are based and buses pick up passengers travelling mostly to Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.
"They took all the workers from the companies and nearby shops," said Haidar Mohammed Eleibi, who works for the Swan Transportation Co in the Salihiya area. He said his brother and a cousin were among those detained, along with merchants, passers-by and even men selling tea and sandwiches. "They did not give any reason for it," he said. "Police came afterward and did nothing."
The Shia-dominated interior ministry, which oversees the police and has been accused of backing militias in sectarian violence, denied its forces were behind the attack.
Another transportation worker, Amjad Hameed, said 15 cars belonging to police rushed into the area and began randomly seizing people. "We asked them why but nobody replied."
Another witness told an Iraqi television station that the gunmen blocked the roads and beat people before putting bags on the captives' heads and leading them one by one to the vehicles.
It was the latest in a series of setbacks for prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, who announced a security plan late last month aimed at restoring order in Baghdad, which has been hit hardest by suicide attacks, roadside bombs and sectarian death squads.
He has not released details of the plan and violence has persisted in the capital of five million people, where at least eight people were killed yesterday, including a Shia school guard and two Sunni brothers who were shot dead as they were driving to college.
Iraqi police also found the blindfolded and bound body of a man who had been shot in the head and chest and another body that had been shot in the head in separate locations in Baghdad. Eight other deaths were reported nationwide.
The Shia prime minister still has not been able to reach consensus among Iraq's ethnic and sectarian parties on candidates for interior and defence minister - posts he must fill to implement his ambitious plan to take control of Iraq's security from US-led forces within 18 months.
The influential Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars, meanwhile, warned the US-backed Iraqi government against participating in any assaults against Anbar, a vast province that stretches from western Baghdad to the borders with Syria and Jordan.