Employees of Sunni Foundation Kidnapped; Attacks Are Unabated

Gunmen in the uniforms of Iraq’s Shiite-dominated police commandos set up a checkpoint north of the capital and kidnapped 10 employees of the main Sunni religious foundation Wednesday, the latest attack in a growing sectarian war.

Iraqi officials said the employees of the Sunni Waqf endowment were in a minibus heading home to the Taji area when they were stopped by men wearing black uniforms and traveling in sport utility vehicles apparently from the Interior Ministry.

The assailants later released a female employee and took the nine others to an unknown location, said Abdul Majeed Thabi, director-general of the endowment, a government agency that manages religious charities and oversees millions of dollars in the sect’s bequests and tithes.

In a separate incident, Thabi said, 10 security guards at the endowment’s northern Baghdad headquarters were kidnapped Tuesday as they were heading to work.

Victims of such kidnappings are often found dead, dumped in desolate areas with bullet wounds to their heads and burns and electric drill marks covering their bodies. According to a study released this week by the United Nations mission in Iraq, 1,375 unidentified bodies were found in May and 1,595 in June. At least 30 bodies were found by authorities Wednesday in various parts of south and west Baghdad.

Also Wednesday, a homemade bomb planted near a grocery store in the mostly Shiite New Baghdad district killed six Iraqi civilians and injured eight.

Three explosions on the street outside Baghdad’s University of Technology killed five people and injured 22. Gunmen shot to death Gen. Fahir Abdul Hussein, an Interior Ministry legal affairs official, in western Baghdad.

There were numerous reports Wednesday of clashes between groups of unidentified gunmen in various sections of the capital. Clashes broke out in the southern districts of Dora and Bayaa and the northern district of Shuala, as well as in Taji, a Sunni city 20 miles north of Baghdad.

Four Iraqi police commandos were killed when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb in the capital’s south. Mortar shells hit a west Baghdad neighborhood, killing two.

As dusk settled, a panicked Yarmouk Hospital security officer hiding behind his desk described by telephone a gunfight erupting inside and outside the facility. The attack was apparently an attempt by insurgents to retrieve a wounded comrade inside. A police officer was killed.

The abductions, shootings and bombings were the latest in a series of escalating attacks and counterattacks in what some officials are calling an undeclared civil war between the Shiite and Sunni Islamic sects. The killings have reached a fever pitch, with about 6,000 dead in May and June, according to the U.N. report.

The 22-page report paints a picture of a country descending into barbarism, lawlessness and misery, with “women, children and vulnerable groups, such as minorities, internally displaced and disabled persons” hurt by violence and “ongoing impunity” for violators of human rights.

The report notes that “security incidents are said to occur ... within view of the police,” and that victims have included clerics, politicians, judges, lawyers, athletes, teachers, professors, students and homosexuals.

Since April 2003, 104 doctors and 165 nurses have been reported killed.

But the targeted killings based on religious identity remain Iraq’s most disruptive layer of violence.

“There is a significant increase in sectarian violence, which is worrisome,” said Gianni Magazzeni, chief of the U.N.’s human rights office in Iraq. “There is also greater willingness by the government to address human rights in a transparent manner.”

Majority Shiites, oppressed under Saddam Hussein and previous Sunni-led regimes, dominate the current government’s security forces.

Embittered Sunnis, favored under Hussein, now lead an insurgency against government and U.S. forces, as well as ordinary Shiites.

Elsewhere in Iraq, a U.S. Marine died Tuesday “as a result of a nonhostile incident” in Al Anbar province, the military said in a statement.

Sporadic clashes between Al Mahdi militiamen and British troops continued in Basra, with at least three soldiers injured by gunmen on motorbikes, a British army official in the southern city said.

Special correspondents in Basra and Taji contributed to this report.