The kidnappers of more than 100 Iraqi government employees freed about half of their hostages on Thursday, releasing all their Sunni captives in a clear sign the seizure had been sectarian in nature.
The industry ministry workers were snatched by gunmen on Wednesday after their shift ended at a factory north of Baghdad.
”Women hostages and those who were Sunnis were set free, and we believe that now about 40 to 50 employees are still held captive,” an Interior Ministry official said.
The workers at the Hateen and Nasr factories in Taji, 30km north of the capital, were seized by at least 50 gunmen and spirited away on the same buses they had boarded to take them home.
Those still held captive are believed to be Shi’ites from Baghdad’s Sadr City and the neighbourhoods of Shuala and Hurriyah.
The kidnappers apparently separated the two groups by checking the names on individual identity cards, the official said.
”Four gunmen carrying Kalashnikovs entered my bus and started shouting at the workers, ‘Put your head down’,” said one of the bus drivers, who escaped the ordeal.
”One of them held a gun to my head and ordered me to drive.”
The buses were led to a small trail in farmland not far from the factory, when ”one man started to climb out of the window, but he was shot dead by a gunman,” he said.
”Another worker, who was a friend of the one who was killed, started to fight with the gunman and tried to snatch his gun when a second masked man shot him from behind in the head,” the driver said.
He also died on the spot.
”Suddenly the kidnappers started to shoot randomly in the bus, wounding another man. The heavy firing made me panic and I pulled over to the side,” he said.
As the bus came to a halt all the men and women inside started to ”jump out of the windows. They just threw themselves out of the windows,” the driver said.
The brazen daylight abduction was a reminder of the sectarian conflict that has left thousands dead in Iraq since a revered Shi’ite shrine in Samarra was dynamited in February.
It also came the same day as Khamis al-Obeidi, one of Saddam Hussein’s lawyers, was kidnapped and shot dead in Baghdad. In reaction, the former president and some of his regime officials launched a hunger strike. — AFP
