U.S.-Iraqi Forces Raid Shiite Stronghold

By SINAN SALAHEDDIN

BAGHDAD, Iraq – U.S. and Iraqi forces raided a Shiite stronghold in Baghdad on Saturday, looking for dozens of men abducted from an Iraqi government office. Coalition forces searched for four American security contractors missing in an attack on their convoy in southern Iraq.

Iraqi soldiers backed by U.S. helicopters swept through the Sadr City section of the capital motivated by intelligence indicating an armed group was holding the Iraqi hostages, the U.S. military said.

The statement did not say whether any hostages were found. No casualties were reported among coalition forces, but Iraqi police said three Iraqi civilians were wounded.

Gunmen dressed like Interior Ministry commandos abducted some 150 men Tuesday from the central Baghdad office that handles academic grants and exchanges. The men were handcuffed and driven away about 20 pickup trucks. About half were released on Tuesday night and Wednesday.

A Sunni who says he was among the hostages freed claimed the kidnappers broke his arm. He said he saw them kill at least three hostages after taking them to empty houses in the Sadr City Shiite slum.

The mass kidnapping was widely believed to have been the work of the Mahdi Army, the heavily armed militia of anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

The kidnapping has raised questions about Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s commitment to wiping out the militias of his prime political backers: the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and al-Sadr’s Sadrist Movement.

Sadr City has long been a Shiite militia stronghold.

A rogue cell from the Madhi Army militia also is suspected of having kidnapped an Iraqi-American soldier last month. Ahmed Qusai al-Taayie, a 41-year-old reserve soldier from Ann Arbor, Mich., was visiting his Iraqi wife in Baghdad on Oct. 23 when gunmen handcuffed him and took him away.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Saturday reiterated Washington’s determination to support the “small seeds” of Iraqi democracy, but she said that success depends on the government and people of Iraq themselves.

It is up to Iraqis to “face up to their differences and realize that they only have one future, and that’s a future together,” Rice said at the Asia-Pacific summit in Vietnam. “They don’t have a future if they try and stay apart.”

In southern Iraq, coalition forces searched for four Americans and one Austrian missing since Thursday when their Kuwait-based security convoy was hijacked, said U.S. Embassy spokesman Michael McClellan.

Islamic Companies, a previously unknown group, claimed responsibility for the kidnapping, according to an Iranian-run Arabic-language satellite news station. It said the group released a videotaped message saying it was holding the five men and demanded the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq and the release of all prisoners being held there.

Also Saturday, Britain’s Treasury chief Gordon Brown, who is expected to replace Prime Minister Tony Blair as Britain’s leader next year, made an unannounced visit to Iraq to meet with Iraqi officials and British soldiers. In an interview with Al-Jazeera TV Friday, Blair said British forces will remain in Iraq to fight the country’s insurgents and militias as long as Iraq’s government wants them to.

Those comments were echoed by Brown on Saturday.

“We are committed to supporting the Iraqis in building a democratic nation which brings security and prosperity to its people and plays a full part in the region and the world economy.”

Britain has about 7,200 troops in southern Iraq, mostly stationed in and around Basra. Since the Iraq war began on March 20, 2003, 125 British service members have died, 95 of them in military action.

Brown also was using the trip to announce $190 million of increased reconstruction aid to Iraq from the British government over the next three years.

Elsewhere, the U.S. military killed 11 insurgents and detained 24 suspected ones in raids in and around the Iraqi cities of Tikrit, Baqouba, Hit, Youssifiyah and Baghdad.

In Baqouba, an increasingly violent, mostly Sunni city about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, fierce fighting between insurgents and U.S. and Iraqi forces sent many residents fleeing inside as the sound of machine gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades rocked the city, police said. Three Iraqi policemen were killed and three wounded, and one insurgent was killed and two suspected ones detained, the coalition said.