US and Iraqi forces are trying to secure the release of a group of up to 60 Shi'ite Muslims being held hostage in a town south of Baghdad, where rising sectarian tensions threaten to provoke armed conflict.
Shi'ite officials in Baghdad said they believed as many as 60 hostages were being held in Madaen, a town 40 km (25 miles) southeast of the capital, after being seized by Sunni gunmen late last night. The gunmen have threatened to kill the hostages unless Shi'ites leave the town, the Shi'ite officials said.
But a senior police source in Baghdad said the number of hostages may be far fewer and said the abductions were the latest in a series of tit-for-tat kidnappings caused by growing antagonism between Sunnis and Shi'ites in the town.
"For weeks there have been kidnappings by one group and then the other. Last night some gunmen took some Shi'ites hostage and they are still being held," the police official said, adding that efforts were under way to try to secure their release.
He said gunmen had also visited the homes of several Shi'ite families in Madaen during the night and told them to leave town. Residents in Madaen told a Reuters cameraman some people had left, driving south towards the city of Kut.
The hostage stand-off comes amid a resurgence of violence following what appeared to be a lull after January elections.
US forces said they saw a 20 per cent decline in attacks in the weeks after the January 30 poll, but in the past week there has been a string of deadly car bombings and shootings.
A bomb at a restaurant in Baquba, a town northeast of the capital, killed up to seven people on Saturday, including two police, witnesses said. The restaurant, popular with policemen, was packed with diners when the bomb went off.
And a suicide car bomb exploded next to a US military convoy on the road to Baghdad airport, killing a civilian bystander and wounding two others, Iraqi police said. There was no immediate word from US forces on any casualties.
Earlier this week, a pair of suicide car bombings in a busy Baghdad street killed 15 people, while a series of attacks the same day and the day before killed more than 20 countrywide.