Unreal.
And someone said Saddam Hussein was bad?
As Kylie said, Better the divil you know.
And someone said Saddam Hussein was bad?
As Kylie said, Better the divil you know.
Up to 150 kidnapped from Baghdad institute
[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif] Staff and agencies
Tuesday November 14, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
[/FONT] Gunmen today kidnapped up to 150 scientists and staff members from a Baghdad research institute.The gunmen - wearing interior ministry commando uniforms - arrived at the institute, beneath the ministry of higher education in the religiously-mixed Karrada area, in a fleet of 20 vehicles at around 9.30am local time (0630 GMT), authorities said.
They forced their captives into the vehicles at gunpoint before driving off, and had sealed off roads leading to the institute during the 20-minute raid, police said.
A police spokesman said around 20 people had been kidnapped. A spokeswoman for the ministry of higher education said up to 100 employees and others had been abducted, while Alaa Makki, the head of the Iraqi parliament's education committee, put the number at 150.
Mr Makki interrupted a parliamentary session to say that between 100 and 150 people, both Shias and Sunnis, had been abducted.
He urged the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, and ministers of interior and defence to respond rapidly to what he described as a "national catastrophe".
Mr Makki said the gunmen had a list of names of those to be abducted, and claimed to be on a mission from the government's anti-corruption body. The kidnapped included the institute's deputy general directors, employees and visitors.
A female professor, who was visiting the institute as the kidnappings happened, said the gunmen forced men and women into separate rooms. The men were then handcuffed and herded on to around six pickup trucks.
The gunmen - some of them masked - wore blue camouflage uniforms of the kind used by police commandos. The women were not kidnapped, but had their mobile phones taken from them.
Shia militias and other illegal groups frequently use stolen or forged uniforms and IDs while committing murders and kidnappings.
The Shia-dominated interior ministry has repeatedly denied any collusion with death squads operating in Iraq. The higher education minister is a member of the Iraqi Accordance Front, a Sunni group in the government.
Today's abductions follow a series of murders and assaults on Iraqi professors and researchers, sparking serious concerns about the reduction of the number of experts in the country and prompting thousands to flee.
In recent weeks, a university dean and a prominent Sunni geologist have been killed, bringing the death toll among education professionals to at least 155 since the war began in 2003.
It appears academics have been singled out for their relatively high public stature, vulnerability and known views on controversial issues in a climate of deepening Islamic fundamentalism.
In July, gunmen seized around 30 people from an Iraqi Olympics committee meeting. Six were later released.
