Gunmen pulled the deputy electricity minister from his car in a busy Baghdad street on Tuesday, kidnapping him and 19 bodyguards in an audacious attack that underlined the vulnerability of Iraq's new government.
The abduction, the second of a politician in three days, is a blow to attempts by Shia Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's new national unity government to show Iraqis that it is coming to grips with the relentless insurgent and sectarian violence.
There has been no let-up in bombings and shootings in Baghdad, despite a security crackdown. A bomb in a crowded market in the Shia district of Sadr City killed more than 60 on Saturday, the worst such attack in three months.
The prime minister's office said Deputy Minister Raad al-Harith was not linked to any of Iraq's Shia, Sunni or Kurdish parties. His religious affiliation was not known.
Harith was travelling in Talbiya district outside the heavily fortified Green Zone compound that houses the government and foreign embassies, when gunmen in camouflaged uniforms stopped his convoy, police said.
The attackers were driving seven cars. "We were standing in the street when civilian cars came and stopped the other cars. Gunmen came out and kidnapped them," witness Ahmed Hassan told Reuters.
Details of the kidnapping were sketchy, but police said it appeared the bodyguards had not resisted, believing that it was an official operation. The Electricity Ministry said it could not confirm the kidnapping, but an official who asked not to be named said Harith had not arrived for work. Police said the abduction took place at about 7.30 am (0330 GMT).
It comes three days after gunmen kidnapped Sunni legislator Taiseer Najah al-Mashhadani and seven of her bodyguards in a northern district bordering Sadr City.
The latest violence came as Maliki continued his tour of Gulf Sunni Arab neighbours trying to sell his national reconciliation plan that aims to end the three-year-old Sunni insurgency and the communal bloodshed that has pitched Iraq toward civil war.
Maliki has held talks with King Abdullah in Saudi Arabia, home to many of the foreign fighters who have been killed or captured in Iraq, and the president of the United Arab Emirates. He heads next to Kuwait.
Analysts say any deepening of the civil conflict in Iraq could draw in neighbouring states on opposing sides, with Iran tending to line up behind the majority Shi'ites and Arab states like Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states backing fellow Sunnis.
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