Coalition forces raid Sadr City seeking kidnapped Brits

05/30/2007

By Alexandra Zavis,
LA Times Staff Writer
May 30, 2007


BAGHDAD -- Hundreds of U.S. and Iraqi troops raided parts of Baghdad's Sadr City slum today after five British citizens were kidnapped from a nearby government building in a coordinated assault that a Cabinet member said bore the hallmarks of a militia operation.

Dozens of men in Iraqi police uniforms seized the five -- four security guards and their client -- in broad daylight Tuesday from the Finance Ministry's administrative building and drove off with them in police vehicles.

Also, a journalist working with the Aswat Al-Iraq news agency in the southern city of Amarah was killed today by gunmen who pulled up in a pickup truck and shot Nazar Abdul Wahid as he was walking down a street.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari described Tuesday's abductions as a "serious breach."

"It was a professional job, and the people who committed the act knew what they were doing," he told The Times. "It had the hallmarks of a militia conducting it."

The Finance Ministry is located on Palestine Street in east Baghdad, an area dominated by Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr's Mahdi militia.

Zebari confirmed that there had been a number of raids in nearby Sadr City, the bastion of the Mahdi militia, in search of the captives.

READ MORE: Click HERE