IRAQ: Iraqi troops backed by US forces mounted fresh raids in a town south of Baghdad yesterday but failed to find any of the Shia hostages reported to have been threatened with death by Sunni guerrillas.
A senior Shia official in Baghdad had said up to 150 hostages, including women and children, were seized on Friday when rebels entered Madaen, situated in an area dubbed the Triangle of Death due to the frequency of guerrilla attacks.
But a police official, who also declined to be named, said there may be as few as three hostages and that the situation was part of a string of tit-for-tat, tribally related abductions.
"Three areas where we suspected there were terrorists were raided but no one was found," interim national security minister Kassim Daoud told parliament. "There are other areas we will attack soon."
Iraq's caretaker prime minister Iyad Allawi accused al-Qaeda's wing in Iraq, led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, of seizing hostages to try to provoke a Sunni-Shia civil war.
"Unfortunately, evil powers are trying to disturb the peace of our country, stop progress, destroy Iraq, keep killing innocent civilians and planning for the start of ethnic, sectarian and religious division," Mr Allawi said in a statement.
Two major Sunni militant groups said the hostage crisis had been fabricated as a pretext to raid Madaen.
No group has claimed responsibility for the kidnappings, and an internet statement issued by Zarqawi's group said: "The infidels fabricated the case of the hostages. They are lying."
Another Sunni insurgent group, the Islamic Army in Iraq, echoed the claim in a separate internet posting. The authenticity of the statements could not be verified.
Several brigades of heavily armed Iraqi troops launched new raids yesterday into Madaen, about 40km from Baghdad.
The Shia official in Baghdad said residents of Madaen had called him on Friday night to say relatives had been kidnapped and threatened with death unless Shias left the town.
On Saturday, state-run Iraqiya television said the gunmen had threatened to start killing the hostages in 24 hours, but there was no evidence yesterday that hostages had been killed.
People in Madaen, where shops closed in expectation of fighting, insisted there was no hostage crisis.