Nine telecommunications engineers working for the Iraquna cellphone company were killed by gunmen at the company’s headquarters in western Baghdad on Wednesday.
Al-Yarmuk Hospital sources said that gunmen broke into the company headquarters in the Jami’a neighbourhood and shot and killed the men.
Eyewitnesses said two African employees from Malawi were also kidnapped.
The sources said the victims worked at installing communication derricks and towers.
Iraquna is an Iraqi branch of the Egyptian mobile company Orascom Telecom. The company’s contract was renewed for another six months on Tuesday. Orascom started the job in Iraq few months after the United States invasion.
In other incidents, gunmen killed a civil engineer near al-Noor Mosque in the Husseinia region, 15km north of Baghdad. The police said the motive behind the killing was being investigated.
Elsewhere, five policemen were killed and another nine were wounded on Wednesday in a roadside bomb targeting their patrol in Saada township north of Baquba, 60km northeast of Baghdad.
Hospital sources said some of the wounded were in serious condition.
In another development, a police officer was killed and two others wounded by a roadside bomb targeting their patrol in a road leading to a US base in Izza region of the southern city of Kut, 180km south of Baghdad.
Meanwhile, a source at the Criminal court trying former president Saddam Hussein said in press remarks on Wednesday that selecting Saad al-Hammashi as successor to resigning judge Rozgar Mohammed Amin to chair the court is a temporary measure.
The independent newspaper al-Mashriq quoted an unnamed court source as saying ”the selection of al-Hammashi is a temporary measure to solve a temporary problem. His selection will not go beyond the next court session.”
Saddam’s trial is to resume January 24.
Hammashi, born in 1952, is a Shi’ite who studied law in Baghdad and worked for years as a lawyer. – Sapa-DPA