Gunmen in Iraqi army uniforms burst into Red Crescent offices
Sunday and kidnapped more than two dozen people at the humanitarian
organization in the latest sign of the country's growing
lawlessness.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, in Iraq on his sixth visit
since the 2003 invasion, appealed for international support for
Iraq's fragile government, saying the bloodshed was being carried
out "by the very forces worldwide who are trying to prevent
moderation."
Blair and his Iraqi counterpart, Nouri al-Maliki, discussed
preparations by British military units in Basra, the main city in
southern Iraq, to turn over security to Iraqi forces. Britain
expects to withdraw several thousand troops from Iraq next year,
despite concerns that Iraqi forces are not ready to keep order on
their own.
"Our task ours, the Americans, the whole of the coalition, the
international community and the Iraqis themselves is to make sure
that the forces of terrorism don't defeat the will of the people to
have a democracy," Blair said.
In the latest violence, gunmen in five pickup trucks pulled up
at the office of the Iraqi Red Crescent in downtown Baghdad and
abducted 25 employees and three security guards from an adjacent
building, police said.
A Red Crescent official, who spoke on condition of anonymity
because of safety concerns, said the gunmen left women behind.
The Red Crescent, which is part of the international Red Cross
movement, has around 1,000 staff and some 200,000 volunteers in
Iraq. It works closely with the International Committee of the Red
Cross, which visits detainees and tries to provide food, water and
medicine to Iraqis.
At least half a dozen mass kidnappings have been carried out in
the Iraqi capital this year, possibly by armed groups linked to the
sectarian conflict between Sunnis and Shi'ites.
(China Daily December 18, 2006)
