Parliament extended Iraq's state of emergency Monday as gunmen kidnapped 14 employees from computer stores in downtown Baghdad in the second mass kidnapping in as many days.
Seven cars pulled up to the shops in front of Baghdad's Technical University, and gunmen wearing military-style uniforms fanned out to surround the buildings, police Lt. Thair Mahmoud said. The attackers then forced the employees outside and into sport utility vehicles at gunpoint, he said. According to the AP, on Sunday evening, 24 workers at a food factory in Baghdad were seized by gunmen who shot and wounded two workers.
In other violence, dozens of bodies were found in and around Baghdad. At least 15 people also died in attacks around the country, including a noontime bomb blast in Baghdad's downtown Al-Nasir Square that killed four and wounded 13.
From Sunday morning to Monday morning, 50 bodies were found in Baghdad alone. The bodies of two more people were found later Monday in eastern Baghdad, police said. They had been shot, their arms and legs bound, and showed signs of torture.
The headless bodies of seven people found Sunday in Suwayrah, 25 miles south of Baghdad, were turned in to the Kut morgue, morgue spokesman Hadi al-Itabi said.
The U.S command said Monday that three American Marines were killed in Iraq's western Anbar province on Saturday - two in combat and the third in a vehicle accident.
One British soldier died and another wounded in a mortar attack in the southern city of Basra, British military spokesman Maj. Charlie Burbridge said. The attack on the Shat Al-Arab hotel in Basra came Sunday afternoon, Burbridge said. Fifteen mortar shells were fired at the compound and three landed inside.
Meanwhile, Iraqi politicians voiced concern over a plan by Syria to move border guards from its frontier with Iraq to help patrol its border with Lebanon. "The Syrian move will make the terrorists' entry to Iraq easier," said Abdul Karim al-Inazi, a Shiite lawmaker with the prime minister's Dawa Party and a former minister of state for national security.
"The Syrian government should do its best to control the borders with Iraq," he told The Associated Press.
In the meantime, parliament approved another month's extension of the state of emergency, in place since November 2004. The measure allows for a nighttime curfew and gives the government extra powers to make arrests without warrants and launch police and military operations when it deems them necessary. It applies everywhere except the northern Kurdish autonomous zone.
