BAGHDAD, April 4: Iraq said on Wednesday it is extending the military crackdown in Baghdad to other flashpoint regions where insurgent and sectarian violence has killed hundreds in the past two weeks.

In the latest example of a spike in unrest away from the troop build-up in the Iraqi capital, gunmen dressed in police uniforms kidnapped 22 shepherds from the desert near Karbala on Wednesday.

Iraqi and US officials announced that Operation Fardh al-Qanoon (Imposing Law) has already been under way in the restive northern city of Mosul since Tuesday and will also focus more on the outskirts of Baghdad.

“The efforts are now extending beyond Baghdad to provide peace and security to other provinces,” Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told reporters.

Hundreds have died in massive bombings outside Baghdad although the capital has also continued to face its daily share of car bombings.

On March 27, in the town of Tal Afar near Mosul, a suicide bomber blew up his truck full of flour and explosives amid a crowd of largely Iraqi Shiites waiting for food supplies, killing at least 107 people and wounding nearly 200.

The bombing was followed by revenge killings as a group of policemen went on a rampage, dragging Sunni Arabs out of their homes and killing them in the streets in the worst bout of sectarian bloodshed in recent months.

Tal Afar mayor Najim Abdallah said 56 Sunnis were killed.

Brutal bomb attacks and sectarian killings have ripped through Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, considered the second most dangerous region after the capital itself.

On Wednesday, gunmen seized 22 shepherds and their sheep north of Karbala in the latest mass abduction.

Travelling in three cars, the kidnappers swooped on the shepherds in an isolated desert area and took their truck, herd and weapons, said Karbala police spokesman Rahman Mushawi.

The victims were forced into vehicles and driven towards the neighbouring Sunni province of Al-Anbar, a hotbed of Al Qaeda and Sunni insurgents.

Witness Mohammed Abdul Kadhon, a brother of one of the hostages, told police the shepherds were being taken to Ameriyat al-Fallujah, a town where Al Qaeda fighters have clashed with Sunni tribes opposed to their fundamentalism.

“This is an organised terrorist act that has no link to police of Karbala.

We have warned them (shepherds) not to cooperate with police who do not have badges,” Mushawi said.

Further north, gunmen on Wednesday ambushed and killed six Arab workers from a power plant as they came off night shift and were travelling home south of the contested oil city of Kirkuk, their boss Jameel Abdallah said.—AFP