Narrow Escape Amid a Mass Kidnapping

In the end, there simply wasn’t enough room in the cars.

Abu Mahmoud knelt on the sidewalk with his hands over his head. The gunmen had thronged the central Baghdad offices he was visiting Monday. They beat and swore at the terrified employees. Abu Mahmoud -- a nickname he asked to be used in lieu of his real name, for fear of retribution -- prayed as the kidnappers started packing the victims into the vehicles.

The gunmen wore military uniforms and drove up to the offices in sleek sport utility vehicles. They seized at least 26 Iraqis from an American-affiliated business organization and a nearby cellphone shop. Among the victims was Raad Ommar, a longtime La Crescenta resident and chief executive of the Iraqi American Chamber of Commerce and Industry, a high-profile trade group that promotes private-sector business in Iraq.

One by one, they were carted off, and Abu Mahmoud waited his turn.

The 1 p.m. heist -- on a day when at least 30 Iraqis were killed or found dead across the country -- apparently targeted a cellphone company that was reportedly rich with cash. But after guards from the nearby chamber intervened, the gunmen rounded them and their colleagues up.

The gunmen arrived at the elegant Arasat Street neighborhood, which has fallen on hard times because of daily kidnappings and bombings, in a convoy of at least a dozen unmarked vehicles.

“They wore camouflage and helmets and had modern weapons,” said an employee of a nearby shop, who agreed to talk on condition his name not be published.

They worked meticulously.

“Stand up! Stand up!” one of them shouted as the gunmen stormed the offices of the chamber. The men began beating and pushing the male employees, ordering them out onto the street, while leaving the women employees behind.

They blindfolded some and bound the hands of others with plastic cuffs. They pushed Abu Mahmoud and workers out into a gantlet of gunmen watching over the scene.

“They looked very professional,” said the proprietor of a nearby shop. Like other witnesses, he said he was too frightened to give his name. “They had handguns strapped to their legs.”

On the street, the gunmen pointed their weapons at the temples of the trembling victims, and ordered them to put their hands on their heads and kneel forward.

As the gunmen stuffed their quarry into the vehicles, witnesses at nearby offices and shops couldn’t tell if this was an official raid or an illegal abduction.

“We were confused,” one shopkeeper said. “They started carrying people away. Not a single shot was fired.” One employee of a shop said he asked the guards at a nearby compound why they didn’t do anything. “They said, ‘It’s not our job,’ ” he recalled.

Abu Mahmoud was visiting the chamber on a tangential business matter. Kneeling on the sidewalk, he was certain his death was near. “I felt that my life has ended, especially when we are hearing the news every day about the found bodies of people who were kidnapped earlier,” he said.

He and four other victims were still waiting to be taken away. Abu Mahmoud prayed quietly to God for salvation when someone said the convoy of SUVs was full.

“What should we do with these people?” one of the gunmen asked his apparent superior. A long pause ensued.

“Let them go,” said another gunman. The five went free.

The cars began to move off. Abu Mahmoud shook with relief. “I felt that I was born again into another life,” he said. “I couldn’t believe it until I saw the cars fading off in the horizon.”

Ommar, a bookish computer consultant, moved back to his homeland after the 2003 toppling of Saddam Hussein’s government to found the chamber, which has grown into one of the bright spots in Iraq’s bleak economic landscape.

He traversed several worlds, visiting with officials in the well-protected Green Zone, private investors abroad and Iraqi merchants.

“This is very bad,” said Fares Musleh, the chamber’s Jordanian contact person. “We’re always doing good things. We’ve always been outside the Green Zone and out in the open.”

Among other Baghdad incidents, eight carloads of kidnappers took a wealthy merchant and two of his sons from their car in the southeast Baghdad neighborhood of Zafarania. Police said the gunmen wore military uniforms.

Gunmen in southern Baghdad killed Maj. Gen. Fakhri Jamil Salman, an officer in the Iraqi National Intelligence Service. In western Baghdad, Maad Jihad, an advisor to the Health Ministry, was killed.

Roadside bombs in northern and eastern Baghdad targeting U.S. military and Iraqi police patrols injured several people. Authorities discovered the bodies of 22 men in various parts of the capital.

Police also said they arrested two suspects tied to kidnapping rings in southern Baghdad. Authorities northeast of the capital freed a kidnapping victim during an operation that also netted 16 suspects.

In Karbala, an official said that gunmen killed a police official.

In Samarra, gunmen killed Iraqi police Lt. Col. Sattar Fadhil, police said. Two Sunni Arab men in a town near Basra were reported kidnapped, the latest in a wave of sectarian violence in the southern city.

West of Kirkuk, an ambulance carrying four injured police officers and an attorney was ambushed by gunmen, who killed the lawyer, kidnapped the officers and severely beat the relatives of the officers following in a car close behind. The beheaded bodies of three police officers were later discovered in the area.

Special correspondents in Baghdad, Kirkuk and near Basra contributed to this report.