Gunmen wearing the uniform of Iraqi police commandos seized dozens of employees from the offices of a security company in eastern Baghdad this afternoon.
Two sources said about 50 people were taken. They said that the gunmen, who arrived in at least 10 vehicles, broke into the headquarters compound of the firm in the Zayouna district.
The attackers hit the al-Rawafid Security Co, a private Iraqi-owned business, and forced the workers into seven vehicles, said Interior Ministry Maj Felah Al-Mohammedawi.
Meanwhile, the bodies of 18 men - bound, blindfolded and strangled - were found in a Sunni Arab district of Baghdad.
The dumping of bodies bearing signs of torture and killed execution-style has long been a feature of the violence. The 18 bodies discovered by US troops in western Baghdad late last night had all been garrotted and had their hands bound with plastic ties, police and hospital officials said.
There was confusion over the identities of the victims, a mixture of middle-aged and young men in civilian clothes.
A policeman at the Yarmuk hospital morgue pointed to their clothing and long hair as an indication some may have been foreign religious extremists linked to al Qaeda, but news reporters who saw the bodies said many appeared to be Iraqis.
"I saw the bodies when they arrived," said a policeman at the hospital. "I saw blood and signs of beating. The police who brought them said they weren't Iraqis," he said.
Senior officials, aware of the potential for sectarian anger if it becomes clear all are either Sunni or Shi'ite Muslims, made no formal comment on the religious identities of the dead.
Similar incidents in the past have provoked anger among rival communities. The US military said a patrol found the bodies in the western Mansour district after receiving reports of a suspicious vehicle on the side of the road.