Iraqi deputy minister kidnapped
Car bomb kills 22
Gunmen in camouflage uniforms kidnapped Iraq's deputy health minister from his home yesterday, the day after another prominent Shi'ite politician was shot dead amid brewing sectarian strife.
It was the latest incident over the past week that cast doubt on the loyalties of Iraq's US-trained security forces and came as the Syrian foreign minister flew in for talks likely to focus on aid reaching militants through Syria.
A suicide bomber earlier killed 22 people in a Shi'ite town south of Baghdad after luring poor day labourers with the promise of work and then detonating explosives in a minibus.
A Sunni Islamist group claimed the attack in Hilla, calling it revenge for a mass kidnap from a Sunni-run Baghdad ministry that many Sunnis blame on Shi'ite militiamen in police uniform.
In Baghdad, Ammar al-Saffar, 50, a member of Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Dawa party, was taken away by gunmen wearing uniforms who were accompanied by three men in suits, a neighbour, who declined to be identified, said.
An Interior Ministry official said the gunmen arrived in six vehicles at the home Mr Saffar shared with his sister in the mainly Sunni neighbourhood of Adhamiya shortly after sunset.
Mr Saffar survived an assassination attempt in June 2004. The apparent abduction came the day after Ali al-Adhadh of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a Dawa ally, was shot dead with his wife as he drove in mainly Sunni west Baghdad, police and a party official said.
Tuesday's mass kidnap at the Higher Education Ministry was followed by the kidnapping of Shi'ite bus passengers by uniformed men who set up checkpoints in a Sunni district.
The Shi'ite-held Interior Ministry has said all the civil servants were released days ago - but the Sunni Higher Education Minister is boycotting the government until 66 people the ministry says are still missing are accounted for.
With sectarian pressure undermining Iraq's government and growing pressure in Washington for a change of tack in Iraq, Syria's foreign minister arrived for a rare visit to Baghdad.
Walid al-Moualem flew in and was expected to hold talks with Iraqi leaders about repeated US and Iraqi complaints that Damascus has done too little to stop the flow of insurgents and weapons across its border.