Gunmen take 50 security workers hostage as violence escalates

Gunmen dressed in the uniforms of Iraqi policemen have stormed the offices of a private business in Baghdad, kidnapping up to 50 workers and bringing yet more chaos to a city in the grip of bloody sectarian conflict.

The unidentified group launched its attack on the al-Rawafid security firm in broad daylight yesterday afternoon and seized dozens of employees, including former members of Saddam Hussein's security forces.

The company, whose owner was among those abducted, is one of dozens providing protection for businesses and other clients in the war-ravaged country and is located in Zayouna, a volatile mixed Sunni-Shiite neighbourhood in east Baghdad.

The mass kidnapping came soon after the bodies of 18 men - bound, blindfolded and strangled - were found dumped in a predominantly Sunni Arab district of the capital, apparent victims of the sectarian turmoil gathering pace in Iraq since the bombing of a renowned Shia shrine last month.

Senior officials, aware of the potential for sectarian anger were it to become clear all were either Sunni or Shi'ite Muslims, made no formal comment on the religious identities of the dead. The bodies had been left in an abandoned minibus near the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Amiriyah in western Baghdad.

Found by US troops on Tuesday night, the men had all been garrotted, while two had been shot and the others strangled, according to hospital sources. "We found a rope round the neck of one of the [18] victims," doctors told Reuters.

In another gruesome discovery, two more bodies were found dumped, tied up and bullet-ridden, in the east of the city. Their identities were unknown.

Iraq has seen a resurgence of sectarian violence since an attack on Samarra's golden shrine on February 22 sparked fury among the country's Shiite population and a wave of reprisal killings which has claimed the lives of more than 400 people. The surge in bloodshed has provoked fears of civil war and deepened the mutual suspicion between the country's majority Shi'ite Muslims and minority Sunnis.

Iraq's Shi'ite interior minister, loathed by many Sunnis who accuse him of condoning death squads run from within his ministry, yesterday escaped an apparent assassination attempt when a roadside bomb blasted his convoy and killed two people. Minister Bayan Jabor, a former leader of Sciri's Badr Brigade militia, one of the main groups accused of carrying out sectarian killings against Sunnis, was not in his car.

The US State Department yesterday acknowledged that 2005 had seen an increase in the numbers of reported killings by the Iraqi government. It also admitted that members of sectarian militias dominated many police units.