Iraq: Gunmen abducted 10 bakery workers in Baghdad yesterday, and a militant group linked to al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for some of the bombings that killed 43 people in the capital the day before.
West of Baghdad, the US military tried to increase pressure on insurgents in the rebel stronghold Ramadi by setting up extra checkpoints to deny them freedom of movement.
US and Iraqi forces are battling a Sunni insurgency that erupted after Saddam Hussein's fall in 2003 and shows no sign of easing despite the June 7th killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq, and a security clampdown in the capital.
Ramadi has emerged as Iraq's biggest hotspot since a major US military offensive crushed militants occupying nearby Falluja on the river Euphrates in 2004.
Responding to media reports that US-led forces have sealed off parts of Ramadi, military spokesman Lieut Col Bryan Salas said the operations were part of continuing efforts to restore stability there.
"We are focusing on multiple sites used by the insurgents to plan and conduct terrorist attacks and store weapons," he told reporters in an e-mail.
"We have also set up additional checkpoints to restrict the flow of insurgents, but citizens will still be able to enter and leave the city," he said. "This is just one part of a long-term plan to restore stability to Ramadi."
Earlier this month, another spokesman said al-Qaeda had gained ground in Ramadi and that 1,500 extra US troops brought to Iraq to help fight them would try to break their grip on the town.
Baghdad appeared relatively calm yesterday, apart from the attack in which police said gunmen stormed a bakery in Kadhimiya, a mainly Shia Muslim district, and snatched 10 employees. Insurgents often mount such attacks as part of a campaign to topple the US-backed, Shia-led government.
In Washington, the White House said it was aware of media reports that two US soldiers who went missing after an attack on their checkpoint on Friday were abducted by insurgents.
"We're aware of news accounts," spokesman Tony Snow said, but added that the White House was "making no assumptions".
The Mujahideen Shura Council, which had pledged to continue what it described as the holy war against crusader forces until "doomsday", said in a statement that it was behind four Baghdad bombs on Saturday, out of the seven reported by police.
It described one attack, a car bomb at a checkpoint in east Baghdad that police said killed 11 people, as "a blessed operation that led to the torching of three cars and the killing of the soldiers around the building".
The Mujahideen Shura Council, a grouping of al-Qaeda in Iraq and other Sunni Islamist militant groups, said it was also behind three other bombings, though two of them did not appear to match police information.
Saturday's bloodshed defied a security sweep launched in Baghdad earlier in the week by 50,000 Iraqi troops backed by 7,000 US-led soldiers.
It added to pressure on prime minister Nuri al-Maliki to crack down on the sectarian and guerrilla attacks that have killed thousands of Iraqis in the last three years.
Zarqawi inspired and organized a flow of militants from the Arab world willing to become suicide bombers to fight US forces and the Iraqi government.
The US military has said it expects his successor, who it has named as Egyptian-born militant Abu Ayyub al-Masri, to use the same tactics as Jordanian-born Zarqawi. - (Reuters)