IRAQ: Dozens of Baghdad bus passengers may have been kidnapped at fake security checkpoints, police said yesterday, while government officials argued over whether staff abducted from a ministry had been tortured and killed.
Six missing minibuses were mostly taking Shia Muslims across mainly Sunni west Baghdad when gunmen, some in uniform, pulled them over for bogus security checks, police sources said.
Fifteen people were grabbed from a city centre cafe after dark, police said. Nine were gunned down at a bakery, some of at least 50 reported deaths that underlined how little control government and US forces have over the capital's streets.
Demands are growing in Washington to start bringing troops home, and prime minister Nuri al-Maliki and US commanders face a race against time to build Iraqi security forces capable of stifling the sectarian strife between Sunnis and Maliki's majority Shia community that is pushing Iraq towards civil war.
Fissures are opening in the six-month-old national unity government after dozens of civil servants were seized by men in police uniform on Tuesday.
The Sunni minister whose employees were abducted is boycotting the cabinet until they are found.
"There is no effective government," higher education minister Abd Dhiab told the BBC, complaining of "anarchy".
Despite repeated insistence from Mr Maliki's government spokesman that nearly all Mr Dhiab's staff were free and unharmed, the minister said about 70 were missing, and some of the others had been tortured and others killed. Between 40 and 150 men were taken, depending on different official accounts. Mr Dhiab did not say how many hostages had died. "According to the people released, they were killed by torture," he said.
"I can't believe I'm alive," one man who was freed said, describing the kidnappers as "very organised and taking orders".
Interior minister Jawad al-Bolani said five senior police officers who had been detained may have been involved.
He told reporters he suspected that an "external power" had a role - possibly referring to Iran, which US and some Iraqi leaders accuse of supporting Shia militias infiltrating the police.
The latest mass abductions took place throughout the day in the Sunni-dominated Adil district of west Baghdad, police sources said. They were now looking for passengers in minibuses carrying passengers to the nearby Shia area of Kadhimiya. "We don't know how many people may be involved," a police source said.
The fate of thousands snatched by sectarian death squads is grim. Dozens are found dead each day.
Four more US soldiers were reported killed yesterday. - (Reuters)