20 Iraqis killed; 150 abducted in Baghdad - Yahoo! News

20 Iraqis killed; 150 abducted in Baghdad - Yahoo! News: "
By QAIS Al-BASHIR, Associated Press Writer

Tue Nov 14, 5:26 AM ET"


BAGHDAD, Iraq - Police and medical workers said at least 20 Iraqis were killed in clashes Tuesday in Ramadi, where U.S. ground troops and warplanes have conducted a series of operations over recent days targeting Sunni insurgents.

Also Tuesday, gunmen wearing Iraqi police commando uniforms kidnapped up to 150 staff members from a government research institute in downtown Baghdad, the head of the parliamentary education committee said.

Alaa Makki interrupted a parliamentary session to say between 100 and 150 people, both Shiites and Sunnis, had been abducted in the 9:30 a.m. raid. He urged the prime minister and ministers of interior and defense to rapidly respond to what he called a "national catastrophe."

Makki said the gunmen had a list of names of those to be taken and claimed to be on a mission from the government's anti-corruption body.

Those kidnapped included the institute's deputy general directors, employees, and visitors, he said.

Police and witnesses said the raid began with gunmen closing off roads around the institute in the downtown Karradah district.

Police spokesman Maj. Mahir Hamad said the entire operation took about 20 minutes. Four guards at the institute put up no resistance and were unharmed, he said.

Meanwhile, Ali al-Obaidi, a medic at Ramadi Hospital, said those killed were civilians who died in shelling by U.S. tanks. A police spokesman said 20 people were killed, but gave no information about their identities or how they died.

The U.S. military said it had no information on fresh Ramadi clashes.

Insurgents have grown increasingly bold around Ramadi, which lies deep in the Sunni heartland west of Baghdad where tribal leaders were strong allies of deposed dictator
Saddam Hussein.

U.S. forces said they used air-launched weapons on Saturday to destroy a building in the city that had been booby-trapped to explode upon entry. The military said there were no reports of civilian casualties in that attack.

In other violence, assailants killed seven passengers aboard a minivan ambushed Tuesday near Mandali on the Iranian border, Diyala provincial police said.

Six people were killed in fighting overnight between Shiite gunmen and American forces in Shula, northwest Baghdad, police spokesman Mohammed Kheyoun said. Residents said U.S. warplanes had fired rockets at homes in the area and put the death toll as high as nine. The U.S. military has not commented on the reports.

Elsewhere in the capital, one person was killed when a car bomb detonated near a restaurant in west Baghdad, police Lt. Maitham Abdul-Razzaq said.

Three insurgents were blown apart trying to plant a roadside bomb Monday night in the northwestern city of Mosul, police Brig. Abdul-Karim Ahmed Khalaf said.

The U.S. military, meanwhile, said an airstrike killed three insurgents suspected of being part of a bomb-making ring in Youssifiyah, 12 miles south of Baghdad.