A senior official of Iraq's Housing and Reconstruction Ministry was kidnapped from his home in Baghdad on Tuesday, while six Iranian pilgrims were kidnapped after the bus they were traveling in was fired upon by gunmen.
Iraq's security authorities identified the Iraqi official taken hostage as Saad Albana, and revealed that the six Iranians were Shiite pilgrims either traveling to, or returning from, a Shiite holy site north of Baghdad.
Several female members of the Iranian group were released shortly after they were ambushed, according to Reuters.
Also on Monday, a relative of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, Thafer Migwil Hazza, was kidnapped from his home as well. Hazza, formerly an Iraqi army officer, lived in the town of Tikrit, also the hometown of the former president, north of the nation's capital.
The kidnappings followed the abduction of four foreign humanitarian workers in recent days. Captors of of one of the workers, identified only as a German woman, was abducted along with her driver on Friday. Her captors publicly announced on Tuesday that they would kill the two if Germany did not cease its support of the US-led invasion into Iraq. The woman and her driver were two of four foreign humanitarian workers kidnapped recently in Iraq.
Chancellor Angela Merkel, Germany's new conservative leader, has sought to improve relations with the United States; her predecessor, former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Merkel announced that Germany would continue its policy of helping to train Iraqi forces outside Iraq.
The German Foreign Ministry confirmed Tuesday that one of its citizens has been missing for five days, and Germany's ARD television has broadcast photos allegedly showing the blindfolded woman with her captors.
Also on Tuesday, a roadside bomb which targeted a US patrol north of Baghdad killed two American soldiers. The US military also reported that another US soldier was injured on Monday, when the vehicle he was driving in was also targeted by a roadside bomb.
Two Sunni politicians were also killed on Monday in a separate attack. In one incident, gunmen killed a senior official of Iraq's largest Sunni party and his two bodyguards as they drove Monday from Fallujah to Baghdad, the Iraqi Islamic party said. Ghalib al-Sideri, a public relations director for the Sunni-led Council for National Dialogue, was also shot and killed Monday in southern Baghdad, police said, according to the AP.
"Guilty before proven innocent"
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice responded to mounting accusations against the US that the CIA is running secret prisons in Europe for terror-suspects, according to Reuters.
Rice reminded Europeans that the struggle in Iraq and against world terror is a joint one between the US and countries of the world.
Rice has yet to deny the existence of secret prisons.
The Secretary also defended the policy of making arrests before crimes were committed in a recent interview, saying, "We have never fought a war like this before where ... you can't allow somebody to commit the crime before you detain them."
"Because if they commit the crime, thousands of innocent people die," she explained.
The developments come one day after the trial of former leader Saddam Hussein was resumed, and then adjourned again until December 5.
Representatives of Saddam demanded that more time be granted to allow co-defendants to find new counsel following the death one of the defense attorneys and the flight of another from Iraq.
Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin agreed that more time was needed to find new representation for former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan and former intelligence chief Barzan Al Tikriti.
In western Baghdad, two Arab politicians who were members of a Sunni party contesting next month's parliamentary polls, were also killed, along with their bodyguard.
© 2005 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
