Region | Iraq
Iraqi deputy health minister kidnapped
Gunmen kidnapped Iraq's deputy health minister from his home on Sunday, the day after another prominent Shiite politician was shot dead amid growing sectarian strife.
- Agencies
- Published: 00:00 November 20, 2006
Baghdad: Gunmen kidnapped Iraq's deputy health minister from his home on Sunday, the day after another prominent Shiite politician was shot dead amid growing sectarian strife.
In Baghdad, Ammar Al Saffar, 50, a member of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki's Dawa party, was taken away by gunmen wearing uniforms who were accompanied by three men in suits, a neighbour, who declined to be identified, said.
An Interior Ministry official said the gunmen arrived in six vehicles at the home Al Saffar shared with his sister in the mainly Sunni neighbourhood of Adhamiya shortly after sunset.
Al Saffar survived an assassination attempt in June 2004.
It was the latest incident over the past week and came as the Syrian foreign minister flew in for talks likely to focus on aid reaching militants through Syria.
A suicide bomber earlier killed 22 people in a Shiite town south of Baghdad after luring poor day labourers with the promise of work and then detonating explosives in a minibus.
A Sunni Islamist group claimed the attack in Hilla, calling it revenge for a mass kidnap from a Sunni-run Baghdad ministry that many Sunnis blame on Shiite militiamen in police uniform.
The minister's abduction came the day after Ali Al Adhadh of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a Dawa ally, was shot dead with his wife as he drove in mainly Sunni west Baghdad, police and a party official said
Tuesday's mass kidnap at the Higher Education Ministry was followed by the kidnapping of Shiite bus passengers by uniformed men who set up checkpoints in a Sunni district.
The Shiite-held Interior Ministry has said all the civil servants were released days ago - but the Sunni Higher Education Minister is boycotting the government until 66 people the ministry says are still missing are accounted for.
Iraq's top Sunni cleric said on Sunday the Shi'ite-led government had trumped up terrorism charges against him to stop him holding it to account for the actions of Shiite militias.
Harith Al Dari was issued with an arrest warrant last week. Hundreds of Sunnis demonstrated in protest in Baghdad on Sunday.
"The government wanted to instigate a crisis to silence me after we exposed the mass murders and sectarian killings by militias of Shi'ite parties," he said in Jordan, where he lives.
The day's most brutal attack came when a suicide car bomber posing as a contractor looking for workers blew himself up among a crowd of labourers in the mainly Shiite town of Hilla south of the capital, killing at least 22 people and wounding 44, police said.
The tactic has been used before by Al Qaida-linked Sunni militants at spots where men congregate hoping for casual work.
The violence continued on Sunday with a group of farm labourers coming under attack near the village of Sadiya Al Jabal, east of the flashpoint city of Baquba. Eight were killed and two more wounded when gunmen sprayed their minibus with bullets, police said.
Ten Iraqis were killed when four car bombs exploded within minutes of each other at a bus station in southeast Baghdad's largely Shiite Al-Mashtel neighbourhood.
Three children were also killed in the northern town of Hawijah when a booby-trapped toy exploded.
Elsewhere in Iraq, 11 others were killed, including three people when a suicide bomber blew himself up at a condolence meeting in the northern city of Kirkuk, police said.
Meanwhile, security forces continued their hunt for four US citizens and an Austrian kidnapped on Thursday by militiamen disguised as police near the Kuwaiti border as they escorted a vehicle convoy.
More from Iraq
More from Region
News Editor's choice
-
6,000 cups and counting: Addicted to that tea
This cafeteria in Al Mamzar attracts thousands of customers daily, including the rich and not so rich
-
Swimming pool horror: Twins hospitalised
Twins rushed to hospital after collapsing from chlorine inhalation at swimming pool in their villa
-
Play your cards right with credit card interest
UAE Central Bank plans to cap interest rates, but are you paying thirty-five per cent now?
