Iraqi-U.S. Forces Conduct Raids Searching For 5 Abducted British Citizens

BAGHDAD (AP) _ Hundreds of Iraqi and U.S. troops cordoned off sections of Baghdad's Sadr City slum Wednesday and conducted a series of raids after five British citizens were abducted from a nearby

Wednesday, May 30th 2007, 6:57 am

By: News On 6

BAGHDAD (AP) _ Hundreds of Iraqi and U.S. troops cordoned off sections of Baghdad's Sadr City slum Wednesday and conducted a series of raids after five British citizens were abducted from a nearby government building, police and residents said.

British Embassy officials held ongoing talks Wednesday with Iraqi officials to discuss the situation, Britain's Foreign Office said. Britain's COBRA crisis committee was also to meet for the second day.

The five men were pulled out of a Finance Ministry office by about 40 heavily armed men in police uniforms in broad daylight Tuesday and driven in a convoy of 19 four-wheel-drive vehicles toward Sadr City, according to Iraqi officials in the Interior and Finance ministries.

A senior Iraqi official said the radical Shiite Mahdi Army militia was suspected in the attack.

British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said officials were doing all they could to secure the ``swift and safe return'' of the five.

``This is clearly a very distressing time for all concerned,'' she said, arriving at a Group of Eight meeting in Potsdam, Germany.

Foreign Office officials are ``offering help and assistance to the next of kin'' of the Britons, Beckett said.

``It is not helpful at this stage to speculate on what might have happened,'' she said. ``We are working closely with the Iraqi authorities to establish the facts and doing all we can to secure their swift and safe return.''

Soon after the abduction, Iraqi forces established a special battalion of Iraqi soldiers and police to search for the men, said Brig. Gen. Qassim al Musawi, an Iraqi army spokesman.

``We are conducting search operations near the site where the abduction took place,'' he said. ``Maybe today or in the coming few days, we will find them with the help of secret intelligence.''

Residents of Sadr City said hundreds of U.S. and Iraqi troops sealed off areas of the Shiite neighborhood overnight and carried out a series of arrest raids that lasted until dawn. The residents spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals for speaking to the Western media.

The U.S. military said it had arrested five suspected militants and one suspected leader of a militant cell during early morning raids in Sadr City. Those arrested were believed to be part of a cell that smuggled weapons in from Iran and sent militants to Iran for training, the statement said.

The statement did not link the raid to the missing men.

Two civilians were killed and four others injured in crossfire from gunbattles that broke out in one of the raids, police said. The civilians had been sleeping on their roofs in a traditional Iraqi custom to escape the brutal heat, police said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

The U.S. military, responding to a query from The Associated Press, said in an e-mail that it had conducted two raids in Sadr City but that no shots were fired.

A roadside bomb that apparently targeted a passing police patrol in Sadr City, missed and killed one civilian and wounded four others, police said.

In other violence, several mortar rounds apparently targeting an American military base in the restive city of Fallujah missed their mark and landed instead on a courthouse and in a residential neighborhood, killing nine civilians and wounding 15 others, according to police and Dr. Anas al-Rawi, of Fallujah General Hospital.

A police commander's convoy was struck by a roadside bomb in the town of Hamzah, south of Baghdad, killing two guards and injuring two others, a police officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he feared reprisals for talking to the media.

Gunmen in three cars ambushed three soldiers who had stopped to drink orange juice in the center of Karbala, 50 miles south of Baghdad, and stole the nearly $396,000 in salaries they were transporting to their unit, an army official said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

The three soldiers were arrested on suspicion of involvement in the theft, the official said.

The U.S. military said 10 American soldiers were killed in roadside bombings and a helicopter crash Monday, making May _ with at least 113 fatalities so far _ the third deadliest month of the war for U.S. troops.

The Islamic state of Iraq, an al-Qaida front group, claimed responsibility for shooting down the helicopter in a statement posted on a militant Web site. The claim could not be independently verified. The military did not say if the helicopter was shot down or had mechanical problems.

Attacks on Iraqis raged on as well. Police and morgue officials contacted by the AP reported at least 120 people killed or found dead. All of the officials refused to allow use of their names fearing they could be targeted by militants.

Police said two car bombers hit neighborhoods on opposite sides of the Tigris River on Tuesday, killing 40 people and wounding more than 100 others. A Shiite mosque was destroyed in the second of the two attacks, in the Amil neighborhood in west Baghdad.

Hours after the British were abducted, Joe Gavaghan, a spokesman for Montreal-based security firm GardaWorld, confirmed that four of its security workers and one client were kidnapped. All four GardaWorld workers are British citizens, he said, declining to provide more details.

A spokesman for BearingPoint, a McLean, Va.-based management consulting firm, said one of the company's employees, apparently the client referred to by Gavaghan, was among those abducted.

If the kidnappings are the work of the Mahdi Army, as asserted by several Iraqi officials, they could be retaliation for the killing by British forces last week of the militia's commander in Basra.

Canon Andrew White, the Anglican vicar of Baghdad, who lives in the Garda World compound and is involved in efforts to free the men, said it's ``a strong possibility'' the kidnapping was a retaliation for the killing.

``We have been in contact with (the Mahdi Army) and are doing our best to try and continue that contact throughout the day,'' he told BBC radio.

The raid was reminiscent of an attack by the Shiite militiamen, dressed as Interior Ministry commandos, who stormed a Higher Education Ministry office Nov. 14 and seized as many as 200 people. Dozens of those kidnap victims have never been found.

Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, the Interior Ministry spokesman, said the abduction Tuesday was carried out by men wearing police uniforms who showed up at the Finance Ministry data collection facility in 19 four-wheel drive vehicles of the type used by police. He said the band of kidnappers sped off across the Army Canal to the east. Sadr City, the Shiite Mahdi Army stronghold, is directly east of the Canal.

``We are pursuing this case very vigorously, first to release them, secondly to establish the truth of what happened, who was responsible,'' Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told BBC radio on Wednesday.

Zebari said that the government has long believed that its security forces were infiltrated by militia members.

``The number of people who were involved in the operation _ to seal off the building, to set roadblocks, to get into the building with such confidence _ (means they) must have some connection,'' he said.