Americans seized in Iraq after convoy hijack
Daylight Mayhem In Iraq.From an article By Aref Mohammed:
SAFWAN, Iraq (Reuters) - British and U.S. forces mounted raids in southern Iraq on Friday in the hunt for four Americans and an Austrian kidnapped when the civilian convoy they were guarding was hijacked, Iraqi security sources said.
British troops cordoned off an area of the city of Basra on Friday in what the Iraqi sources told Reuters was a raid based on suspicion the five missing men were held there. A spokesman for the British forces policing the region declined all comment.
From the nearby town of Zubayr, a policeman said U.S. troops had raided the police station there, apparently seeking the hostages. British and U.S. officials have often accused police of working in league with militants hostile to foreign forces.
Police in the border town of Safwan, 60 km (40 miles) south of Basra, showed reporters an armored four-wheel drive vehicle they said the foreigners were driving in when the truck convoy was brought to a halt by gunmen on Thursday after crossing the border from Kuwait on its way to the city of Nassiriya.
Nine Iraqis were also abducted by the gunmen but at least some had already been released, a security source said. Their Kuwaiti employer said only the foreigners were still missing.
A representative of the Crescent Security Group in Kuwait said: "We don't know exactly what happened." The incident had occurred around noon, between Safwan and Zubayr.
Do you think that the daylight raids and activities, along with the implication of so-called allies, shows an emboldened new enemy since the elections?
The incident comes at a time of heightened sectarian tension in Baghdad, not just on the streets but within the government and among groups engaged in the U.S.-backed political process.
Iraq's most prominent Sunni cleric, Harith al-Dari of the Muslim Clerics Association, blasted an arrest warrant issued for him on suspicion of "terrorism" as an attempt by the Shi'ite-led coalition government to divert attention from its own "crimes."
Sunni leaders like Dari, who is safe from arrest in neighboring Jordan, complain that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is not doing enough to rein in militias loyal to his Shi'ite allies and which were blamed for a mass kidnapping of dozens of staff from a Sunni-run government ministry on Tuesday.
Democracy is not an easy thing to swallow for people who have swallowed the backward teachings of Mohammed and are still stuck in the 8th century. And America is getting ready to just hand them a pass with all this rhetoric of withdrawl and timestables resonating from the new American congressional leadership.
Labels: Insurgents, Iraq, kidnappings, UK, United States
Socialize this! 
Personalize this! 
Radicalize this!
