Bodies of 14 Iraq Police Officers Found

The bodies of 14 Iraqi police officers were found Friday in Baquba, their hands bound behind their backs.

The discovery followed the announcement by a Sunni group with ties to al-Qaida that it had kidnapped 18 Interior Ministry employees and would execute them unless its demands were met, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The Islamic State of Iraq posted pictures on its Web site showing 18 blindfolded and shackled men, and said the kidnapping was retaliation for the alleged rape of a Sunni woman. The group demanded the release of all female Sunni prisoners and the punishment of the officers responsible for the rape.

Brig. Gen. Abdul Karim Khalaf of the Interior Ministry confirmed that 10 to 14 members of an emergency response force vanished Thursday while they were traveling from their base near Baquba to a Shiite town nearby. Baquba is the capital of Diyala province, where sectarian violence is common.

In Baghdad, a car bomb killed 10 people and injured 17 in the Shiite stronghold Sadr City, while another car bomb killed a police officer in the southwest part of the city. Two U.S. soldiers and their interpreter were killed by a roadside bomb during a patrol northwest of Baghdad.

On Thursday, two soccer players were gunned down in Ramadi. The two were targeted in an apparent kidnapping, The New York Times said, and shot when they resisted. Their killers accused them of working with the police.