Aid workers kidnapped by gunmen in Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Gunmen in Iraqi army uniforms kidnapped two dozen employees at Red Crescent offices in downtown Baghdad on Sunday, highlighting the threat to humanitarian workers swept up in Iraq’s lawlessness.

The mass abduction was the latest in a series of similar attacks that have targeted workers at factories, delegates at a sports conference and bystanders at bus stations. In most cases, the gunmen have been wearing police or military uniforms. Their identity and motives are unclear, though the sectarian conflict between Sunnis and Shiites has fueled much of the recent violence in Baghdad.

Gunmen in five pickup trucks pulled up to the office of the Iraqi Red Crescent at about 11 a.m., police said. A Red Crescent official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of safety concerns, said the gunmen left women behind and that six workers later were released.

The Dutch Foreign Ministry said three Iraqi security guards at its embassy building in Baghdad were kidnapped along with the Red Crescent employees, and that one later was released. The embassy is next to the offices of the aid group.

The Red Crescent, part of the international Red Cross movement, has around 1,000 staffers and some 200,000 volunteers in Iraq. It works closely with the International Committee of the Red Cross, which visits detainees and tries to provide food, water and medicine to Iraqis.

Police also said Sunday they had found 36 bodies in the Baghdad area, some of them showing signs of torture. The dead included four members of a Sunni tribe who met an Iraqi battalion commander to discuss security, the Iraqi army said.