At least 14 Iraqi police officers have gone missing and an al Qaeda-linked group on Friday showed pictures of 18 men it said had been kidnapped to avenge the alleged rape of a woman last month.
The al Qaeda-linked group said in an internet statement it had kidnapped 18 men working for the Interior Ministry in Diyala province, north of Baghdad.
A police source in Diyala said 14 men, including a high ranking officer, left their base in western Baquba around 11am (8am GMT) on Thursday to return to their homes in the area of Saadiyet al Shat, north of Baquba.
”Since then nobody has seen them. Their families are calling them, but nobody can reach them,” the source said on Friday, adding they were in civilian cars to avoid attention.
Interior Ministry spokesperson Major General Abdul Karim Khalaf confirmed at least 10 to 14 policemen were missing.
”There’s an investigation going on now. All we know is they had left to go on leave and they were going to their homes and then they disappeared,” he told Reuters.
Diyala is home to Shi’ites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds and has seen relentless bloodshed, including mass kidnappings and ambushes of police at their bases and in convoys. Sunni Arabs in the province say the police are infiltrated by militias.
The internet statement included photographs showing 18 men, some in uniform and some in civilian clothing, blindfolded in a room. Some appeared to have identity papers pinned to their shirts but it was not possible to read them.
”God enabled a group of lions of the Islamic State in Iraq to detain 18 affiliates of the Interior Ministry in Diyala province,” said the statement on a website often used by radical Islamist groups such as al-Qaeda.
Retaliation
”This blessed operation came in response to what these apostates are doing in fighting the Sunni folk and the last such act by these treacherous agencies was the rape of our sister … Sabreen Janabi.”
Janabi has said she was raped by officers from the Shi’ite-dominated police force. The government says medical records show she was not raped.
A major Sunni Arab political party later said she was Shi’ite, not Sunni, and that Janabi was a false name.
In Baghdad, US and Iraqi troops are engaged in a security crackdown to stop bloodshed between Shi’ites and Sunni Arabs.
Sectarian tension was fuelled last month by the reports of rape from the woman in Baghdad and another woman in Tal Afar, in north-west Iraq, who said soldiers raped her.
The self-styled Islamic State in Iraq on Friday announced a new offensive aimed at killing 2 000 police or other interior ministry forces to avenge the alleged rapes.
Sunni Arabs and the United Nations have said the security forces are deeply infiltrated by militias, such as the Mehdi Army, loyal to radical Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al Sadr.
US and Iraqi military officials said on Thursday troops would soon launch operations to seize weapons and hunt gunmen in the Mehdi Army bastion of Sadr City.
In the western province of Anbar, gunmen killed two members of the Ramadi soccer team on Friday, police said.
The US military said a marine was killed in Anbar on Wednesday and two US soldiers were killed with their interpreter by a roadside bomb north-west of Baghdad on Friday. – Reuters