Search on for abducted Britons
BAGHDAD – Dozens of U.S. Humvees and Bradley fighting vehicles took up positions around Sadr City at nightfall Wednesday, as American forces pressed the search for five Britons kidnapped in a mock police raid that Iraqi officials said was carried out by the Mahdi Army Shiite militia.
A secret incident report about the abductions – written by Najwa Fatih-Allah, director general of the Finance Ministry’s data processing center, where the Britons were seized – quotes Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, as saying the Mahdi Army “will be profoundly sorry” if it carried out the assault.
Much of the Mahdi Army militia is said to be loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who resurfaced last week after nearly four months in hiding, apparently in Iran, and demanded U.S. troops leave Iraq.
Al-Sadr’s return appeared to be partly an effort to regain control over his militia, which had begun fragmenting. It was unclear whether the 33-year-old cleric would have been aware of or condoned the kidnapping of the five British citizens – four bodyguards and an employee of a management consulting firm.
Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told BBC radio that the government was “vigorously” working to find the attackers but acknowledged the government has long believed that militia members have infiltrated its security forces.
“The number of people who were involved in the operation – to seal off the building, to set roadblocks, to get into the building with such confidence – (means they) must have some connection,” he said.
A top Interior Ministry official, who refused to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said suspicion immediately fell on the Mahdi Army because it was in control of the area around the data processing center and would have blocked such a massive operation by another group.
Portions of Fatih-Allah’s report to Finance Minister Bayan Jabr were read to the Associated Press on the telephone by a government official on condition of anonymity because the document was not for public distribution.
Fatih-Allah’s report said that Iraq’s security ministers, meaning the Defense and Interior ministers, said the assault was the work of the Mahdi Army and quoted them as relaying the remark allegedly made by Petraeus.
Fatih-Allah’s report said U.S. troops surrounded the neighborhood around the center at dawn Wednesday and were joined by some British forces in an apparently fruitless house-to-house search for the kidnapped men.
In other events, police, Iraqi military, hospital and morgue officials reported a total of 72 people killed or found dead nationwide Wednesday.
The U.S. military late Wednesday reported the deaths of three more soldiers, two killed in a roadside bombing Wednesday and one who died of a noncombat cause Tuesday. Their deaths raised to 119 the number of soldiers killed this month, the third-deadliest month of the war for U.S. troops.