BAGHDAD, July 4: An Iraqi deputy minister and his 19 bodyguards were kidnapped by gunmen in broad daylight on Tuesday in the second high-profile abduction in a week despite a massive security crackdown in Baghdad.
Iraqi Justice Minister Hashem Al-Shibli, meanwhile, called for United Nations intervention in the probe into an alleged rape and murder of a woman and three members of her family by US soldiers in March.
The US military also said on Tuesday it killed an Al Qaeda operative suspected of bombing a bustling Shia market in Baghdad last week that left 66 people dead in one of the worst attacks this year.
Deputy Electricity Minister Raad Al-Hareth and his bodyguards were in four cars when they were ambushed by gunmen wearing security forces uniforms in the eastern Baghdad neighbourhood of Talbiyah, a security official said.
“The gunmen took all of them and their cars to an unknown location,” he added.
The US military said it killed an Al Qaeda militant suspected of involvement in a truck bomb attack on a market in Baghdad’s Shia district of Sadr City on Saturday that killed 66 people.
US forces carried out a raid on Sunday near the village of Mudaysis in the western province of Al Anbar in which a member of an Al Qaeda cell was killed and seven others arrested, it said.
“Coalition forces were targeting the Al Qaeda cell and we believe these people were from that cell who are responsible for the bombing on Saturday,” US military spokesman Major William Wilhoite told AFP.
On Tuesday at least eight people were killed in Iraq, and seven corpses were found across the country.
On Monday US prosecutors said a former soldier was charged with raping and murdering an Iraqi woman and gunning down three other members of her family, including a child.
The Justice Department said Steven Green, 21, could face the death penalty.
Iraqi Justice Minister Shibli urged the UN to ‘stop such heinous, immoral crimes’. He said that UN should intervene to empower Iraq ‘to pursue such cases as per its law for crimes committed on its territory’.—AFP
