Violence Despite Baghdad Curfew

(CBS/AP)  Gunmen kidnapped 24 workers from a refrigerated food factory and shot two others in western Baghdad on Sunday evening in what appeared to be a new sectarian attack, a security official said.

The kidnapped workers included Shiites and Sunnis, and among them were three women, Col. Abdul-Karim Khalaf told the Associated Press.

The attackers forced 26 workers into a refrigerator truck. But when two refused to get in the gunmen shot them, leaving them behind, seriously wounded as they sped off with the rest, said police Lt. Maithem Abdul Razzaq.

Khalaf said the identity of the kidnappers or their sect was not known. Similar mass kidnappings in the past have been blamed on either Sunni extremists or Shiite death squads, who sort the captives by their sect and kill their targets.

The workers were snatched from a factory that makes processed meat in the mainly Shiite neighborhood of Hayy al-Amil, in the western part of the capital, Khalaf said. The gunmen also took two refrigerator trucks, he said.

Thousands have been killed in recent months in tit-for-tat sectarian attacks between Shiites and Sunnis.

Also Sunday, the bodies of 21 people apparently killed in such attacks were found in Baghdad or to the south. Among them were seven bullet-riddled, handcuffed bodies in the southern Dora district of the capital, and six corpses — each with a single shot to the head — found in northern Baghdad.

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In other developments:

Angry protests erupted in Sadr City after a joint U.S. and Iraqi raid during which a suspected militiaman was arrested. Angry men at the scene held up a color photo of a smiling, winking Jesus giving a "thumbs up" sign that they said was left by troops at the raided house — apparently believing it signaled the raid was part of a Christian "crusader" plot against the neighborhood.

The U.S. military reported two American soldiers killed in fighting in western Anbar province on Saturday — bringing to at least 70 the number of U.S. troops killed in September, the second highest monthly toll this year after April, when 76 died.

At least 23 people were killed in violence Sunday, and 21 bodies were found in Baghdad or to the south, many of them bound and tortured.

Among those killed in violence Sunday were three Iraqi civilians killed by a car bomb targeting a U.S. military patrol in Baghdad. A woman and a girl died in a crossfire during a joint U.S.-Iraqi raid on a suspected militia members home, Iraqi security officials said.

Security forces are close to capturing or killing the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, a senior Iraqi official said Sunday, showing a captured video of the terror chief teaching followers how to build a car bomb.

Also, eight bodies were found in and around Baghdad and to the south. Among the dead were five men and a girl, whose blindfolded and bullet-ridded bodies were pulled out of Tigris River 25 miles south of the capital, police said.

President Bush isn't letting the publicity around Bob Woodward's new book, "State of Denial," derail his push to garner support for the Iraq War. Nor is he commenting on the book's claim that Laura Bush supported efforts to oust Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

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[mjv2944]

Let'm fight it out amongst themselves. No need to spill any of our young men and womens blood for these nut cases. They'll be fighting when my great grandchildren graduate college. We can concentrate on fighting terrorism, not trying to stop civil war in Iraq.