Gunmen wearing commando uniforms snatched at least 50 people from travel agencies in central Baghdad on Monday in an apparent kidnapping as 11 students were shot dead elsewhere in the capital.
The commander of the police commandos in Baghdad, Major General Rashid Fulayah, strongly contradicted earlier reports that the operation was officially sanctioned.
“The ministry of interior has nothing to do with this arrest and especially not the commando forces and the forces of public-order brigades, who are not authorised to do such operations,” Major General Rashid Fulayah told Agence France-Presse.
Two Syrians were among those taken.
“They took people away randomly,” said one store owner on Salhiya street, convinced it was criminal elements. “They grabbed a father and his two children but left the mother on the street shouting.”
Witnesses described how two vehicles, painted with the distinctive camouflage pattern of the commandos and accompanied by another ten unmarked pick-up trucks, blocked off the street and began taking people.
“If they were the government, they would have investigated and asked who the people they took were,” said another witness, who preferred to remain anonymous.
Unattended small trucks for hauling goods lined the street after their drivers had been taken away.
The raid took about ten minutes and the police who came afterwards to investigate professed no knowledge of the operation.
The confusion over whether the raid was officially sanctioned or a criminal operation is a reflection of the widespread suspicion people in Baghdad have of security forces, some of whom are believed to be infiltrated by militias.
A number of other violent operations have been carried out by people in uniforms, which can be easily purchased in the city’s markets.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has vowed that the restoration of security to the dangerous city was one of his government’s top priorities, though his efforts have been hampered by the inability of his fractious government coalition to agree on a new interior minister.
In separate violence, at least 26 people died in Iraq on Monday, including 15 in Baghdad alone, while more than 80 people died in the previous two days around the country.
Eleven students were killed in southern Baghdad when gunmen in two cars stopped their bus and riddled it with bullets, said an official with the defence ministry.
The attack took place in the southern neighbourhood of Dura, scene of numerous attacks. The students were returning from a local technical college when they were attacked.
Two men driving a water truck along Canal Street in east Baghdad were shot dead when gunmen opened fire on their vehicle. Also in the eastern part of the city, a civil servant with the industry ministry was shot on his way to work.
In west Baghdad, an employee of the municipality was shot dead by gunmen in the upscale Sunni neighbourhood of Mansur.
In the violence-plagued city of Ramadi, west of the capital, where there are daily clashes between United States forces and insurgents, hospital sources reported five people killed when mortars landed on their houses.
The city of Baquba, north-east of Baghdad, was once again a focus of attacks with the killing of four civilians in different incidents, including an official responsible for water planning in a village just north of the city.
On Sunday, gunmen near Baquba pulled over cars containing students and murdered at least 20 of them. Later in the day, a Shi’ite family of four, including an 11-year-old, were shot up in their car as they travelled back to the city.
The mixed Sunni-Shi’ite province of Diyala has been plagued by sectarian violence, with gunmen (of one community) going out of their way to blow up shrines and murder religious leaders from the other community.
In the northern oil city of Kirkuk, a roadside bomb killed an off-duty police officer and the corpse of an Iraqi contractor was found, covered with stab wounds and lacking a head.
In nearby Mosul, armed men on a motorcycle opened fire on a gathering of police, killing one and wounding another four. — AFP