Gunmen in camouflage uniforms kidnapped about 30 Iraqis in Baghdad on Thursday in a brazen daylight attack that underlined the threat from sectarian death squads which a top US general said must be reined in.
"We have to change the dynamics that are going on in Baghdad. There is a lot of sectarian murder in Baghdad," Lieutenant-General Raymond Odierno said at a ceremony where he officially assumed day-to-day control of US troops in Iraq.
Iraqi police said gunmen travelling in 10 government cars and three pickup trucks descended on Sinak, an area in central Baghdad where car parts and agricultural equipment are sold, and rounded up about 30 shopkeepers and bystanders. The gunmen did not appear to target any specific sectarian group, abducting both Shia and Sunni Muslims, police said.
"A number of army vehicles entered the car market and they took around 30 people and shot randomly at the people. They were wearing army uniforms," witness Abu Jassim said.
The Iraqi capital is plagued by daily kidnappings, both political and criminal. In one of the biggest cases, men in camouflage uniforms abducted dozens of staff and visitors from the Higher Education Ministry last month. The ministry said on Thursday that 56 were still officially recorded as missing. Minority Sunni leaders accuse Shia militias of infiltrating the police to carry out kidnappings and killings.
In Khallisa, a religiously mixed town 30 km (19 miles) south of Baghdad, police found the bodies of 15 men near an irrigation canal in a date palm grove. All had been tortured and shot.
Odierno, known as a tough, blunt-speaking general, assumes his post as the No 2 commander of the 135,000-strong US force in Iraq as US President George W. Bush weighs options in changing course in the unpopular war.
Bush wrapped up a three-day review of Iraq policy with senior US officials and outside experts on Wednesday and is expected to announce a new strategy early in the New Year. A group of visiting US senators had blunt words for Iraqi leaders, telling them to put their differences aside to ease the violence that has raised fears of all-out civil war.
"We were very straightforward about how important it is for them to act more effectively as a government and stop some of the divisions that we see clearly within the government," said Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican.
Odierno said key to addressing the violence was for the Iraqi government to decide what to do with militias, who UN officials said last month were operating with impunity and colluding with police in carrying out death squad killings.
The militias, along with Sunni insurgents, have been blamed for fuelling a cycle of tit-for-tat killings that has killed thousands. Several are tied to parties within Prime Minister Nuri Maliki's Shia-led government. "There has to be a policy of what we are going to do with ... the militias, how we can reconcile them back into the Iraqi armed forces or other units. The Iraqi government has to make a decision," Odierno told reporters.
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