World

Two Dozen Iraqi Workers Kidnapped

March 29, 2006 / 1:31 PM EST / CBS/AP

Three groups of gunmen kidnapped at least 24 Iraqis working at a currency exchange and two electronics stores in Baghdad on Tuesday, the interior ministry said. South of the capital, a car bomb exploded as police exchanged fire with two suicide bombers at a police station, wounding at least a dozen people.

The attacks follow two days of violence in Iraq that left at least 151 dead, including 16 people killed Sunday in a military assault on what Iraqis claim was a mosque. Shiite politicians halted negotiations on a new government in response to the assault.

The abductions in Baghdad happened separately but within the same half-hour period, the ministry said.

Fifteen gunmen wearing military uniforms but arriving in civilian cars stormed the Moussa Bin Nasir Exchange Co. in the southwest Harthiyah neighborhood at about 1 p.m., kidnapping six people and stealing tens of thousands of dollars, police said.

At around the same time, seven gunmen in civilian clothes ran into a Daewoo International electronics store in the downtown Karradah district and snatched three employees, including the store manager, police said. A half-hour later, masked gunmen in military uniforms and helmets stormed a different branch of the same company in eastern Baghdad, abducting 15 employees, Lt. Col. Falah al-Mohammedawi said. They also arrived in civilian cars.

In other developments:

Russia's defense minister on Tuesday said reports that Moscow had provided information to Saddam Hussein's regime on U.S. troop movements were "total rubbish." Sergei Ivanov's denial follows a Pentagon report that alleged that two seized Iraqi documents indicate Moscow obtained information from sources inside the U.S. Central Command and passed battlefield intelligence to Iraqi officials.

Authorities imposed a curfew Tuesday in the northern city of Beiji to try to combat a rise in violence there. No vehicles except ambulances and those used by joint U.S.-Iraqi troops were allowed in the streets as soldiers and police started sweeping the city in a search for insurgents and common criminals. The curfew was announced by American troops on loudspeakers Tuesday morning after prayer. It was not clear how long it would last.

An Internet statement purportedly posted by the Mujahedeen Shura Council, a militant Sunni Muslim insurgent group, claimed responsibility for a suicide attack Monday near the gate of a U.S.-Iraq military base east of Tal Afar near the Syrian border. The bomber, wearing an explosives vest, struck shortly after noon, killing at least 40 Iraqis and wounding 30 others, the Iraqi Defense Ministry said. The council's statement said the bomber was a Saudi "martyrdom seeker."

The mass kidnappings came a day after gunmen abducted 16 employees of an Iraqi trading company in Baghdad's upscale western neighborhood of Mansour. Those kidnappers also wore uniforms and masks when they entered the headquarters of the Saeed Import and Export Co. Police said they went through papers and computer files before taking away their captives, al-Mohammedawi said.

Rafidh Salim Saleh, a worker at Saeed who avoided capture, said the company had been in Iraq more than 30 years and was involved with an electricity project in Youssifiyah, 12 miles south of Baghdad. He said a motive for the abductions was not known.

"The company has no political or terrorist ties," he said. "We don't even keep a gun."

In Tuesday's car bomb explosion, two men drove up to the police station in Iskandariyah and started firing machine guns at police, who fired back, hitting one of the assailants before the car blew up, police Lt. Col. Khalil Abdul-Ridha said.

Eleven police and a female bystander were wounded, he said. A series of mortar rounds then hit the police station, but nobody was harmed, he said.

The firestorm of recrimination over the raid Sunday at the mosque in northeast Baghdad will likely make it harder for Shiite politicians to keep a lid on their more angry followers as sectarian violence boils over. A unity government involving Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds is a benchmark for American hopes of starting to withdraw troops this summer.

Iraqis accuse U.S. forces of entering the mosque and killing as many as 22 people, reports CBS News chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan. But the U.S. says this was a raid led by Iraqi Special Operations troops, who were targeting terrorists responsible for kidnappings and executions.

"They were met with intense fire from three sides of the building to include coming from the building that was in the target area that is claimed to be a mosque," said Maj. Gen. J.D. Thurman, commander of the 4th Infantry Division, which is in control of Baghdad.

That explanation did nothing to quell popular anger in the capital, where talks for a national unity government were suspended for a time Tuesday.

At the White House later Tuesday, President Bush said he had been informed by the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad that Iraqis have resumed negotiations on forming a new government.

"I'm pleased to hear from Zal (U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad) that the Iraqis are now back at the table, discussing the formation of a government," the president told reporters at the White House after meeting with his Cabinet.

The governor of Baghdad announced a suspension of all cooperation with U.S. forces, because "of last night's attack against the innocent worshipers."

Thurman denied the charged.

"We did not go into the mosque and execute unarmed worshippers," he said.

This deadly clash could reopen an old wound, warns Logan. Those killed appear to be followers of the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who has fought several bloody battles against American forces.

And there are fears it could further fuel sectarian violence, which has claimed hundreds of Iraqi lives in the past few weeks.