Police search for diplomats
BAGHDAD, Iraq – Police tightened security in an upscale Baghdad neighborhood Friday as the search intensified for two Algerian diplomats kidnapped there. At least 16 people died in attacks in Baghdad and elsewhere.
More police were on the streets and motorists reported extra checkpoints Friday in the western Baghdad neighborhood of Mansour, where top Algerian envoy Ali Belaroussi, 62, and fellow Algerian diplomat, Azzedine Belkadi, 47, were seized the day before. They were not traveling with bodyguards, officials said.
The kidnappings brought to five the number of key diplomats from Islamic countries targeted in Baghdad in less than three weeks in an attempt to undermine support for the Iraqi government among Arab and Muslim nations.
Police officials said they suspected the diplomats and their kidnappers may still be in the Mansour area because witnesses reported the abduction too quickly for the gunmen to have gone far.
Egypt’s top envoy, Ihab al-Sherif, was seized at gunpoint in another western Baghdad neighborhood on July 2, also without security. Three days later, gunmen opened fire on senior envoys from Pakistan and Bahrain in separate attacks police described as kidnap attempts.
The Pakistani diplomat’s security guards returned fire and the assailants fled. The Bahraini, who was slightly wounded, had no bodyguards, but a traffic policeman saw the attack, fired his pistol in the air and the assailants fled, police said.
Al Qaeda’s wing in Iraq, the country’s most feared terror group, claimed responsibility in Web statements for kidnapping al-Sherif and later claimed to have killed him. It warned Muslim nations against ties with Baghdad.
Also in Baghdad, gunmen fired on a car carrying a newlywed couple and their families on Friday, killing the 23-year-old bride and wounding the Iraqi army captain she had just married.
The attack came after Capt. Wissam Abdul-Wahab and his new bride, Sally, were picked up by their families after spending their wedding night at a hotel. They were ambushed in Baghdad’s southern Dora neighborhood.
Four people – one Iraqi soldier and three civilians – were killed in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, during clashes there, police said. The other 11 victims were Iraqi police or soldiers killed in scattered, small-scale attacks throughout Baghdad.
Also Friday, the U.S. military announced that a Marine was killed the day before in a roadside bombing while conducting combat operations west of Baghdad.