|
BAGHDAD, Iraq Mar 09 (CNN): Gunfire and a roadside bomb left four people dead in Baghdad early Thursday, police said.
A woman who worked for an Iraqi humanitarian organization and a man who also worked inside Baghdad's International Zone were gunned down in western Baghdad as they waited for a government car to pick them up and take them to work, police said.
An official with Baghdad emergency police said Rana Abdul Wahab was killed along with the unidentified man when gunmen opened fire on them in the al-Mansur neighborhood about 7:30 a.m. (11:30 p.m. ET Wednesday).
Meanwhile, the Iraqi Interior Ministry has launched an investigation into an incident in which gunmen wearing police commando uniforms on Wednesday seized about 50 guards and employees at an Iraqi private security firm.
Commandos operate under the Interior Ministry, but the ministry says its forces had nothing to do with the incident. Interior Minister Bayan Jabr ordered the probe.
"The Interior Ministry is still investigating this incident, although it was very strange," ministry spokesman Adnan Abdul Rahman said. "How is it possible all the members of a security company were taken hostage by gunmen?"
The 50 people from the security firm remain missing.
In the incident, about 25 armed gunmen in 10 to 15 vehicles raided the Rawafed security firm, according to an account of the incident from police.
They grabbed money and documents from the building and forced the people into vehicles in a two-hour operation. Then they drove off.
Three building guards managed to escape during the ordeal and informed police about what happened.
The firm is in Baghdad's Zayuna neighborhood, a mixed, fairly well-to-do neighborhood consisting of Sunnis, Shiites and Christians.
The incident followed a gruesome discovery Tuesday night in western Baghdad.
Police found the bodies of 18 men who had been strangled and with their hands tied behind their backs, an official with the Baghdad Emergency Police said Wednesday.
The bodies were discovered in a minibus in the Amiriya neighborhood, the official said.
The men were of various ages and were not immediately identified. Baghdad police also said six other bodies were found in the capital: five had been shot, one had been beheaded.
Similar discoveries over the past few months -- mostly in Baghdad -- have helped to fuel concerns over the possibility of civil war between Shiite and Sunni Arabs.
However, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, while criticizing media coverage Tuesday, told reporters at the Pentagon he didn't think there was a civil war in Iraq.
"They want just the opposite," Rumsfeld said of the Iraqi people. "And they've demonstrated the courage to show that they want just the opposite."
|