HUNDREDS of Iraqi and US troops cordoned off sections of Baghdad's Sadr City slum early today for a series of raids in an effort to find five Britons abducted from a nearby government building.
British Embassy officials held ongoing talks today with Iraqi officials to discuss the situation, while the government's Cobra crisis committee was also to meet for the second day.
Four of yesterday's kidnap victims are security professionals working for the firm GardaWorld.
The fifth is an expert who was working for the US management consultancy firm BearingPoint. The five men were pulled out of a Finance Ministry office by about 40 heavily armed men in police uniforms yesterday and driven in a convoy of 19 four-wheel-drive vehicles toward Sadr City.
The leader of the Shia Al-Mahdi army later claimed it had seized them as the first stage of forcing the British out of Iraq.
Abu Hussein, a commander of the insurgent group loyal to senior cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr, reportedly pledged there would be "more and bigger operations" as part of a drive to get UK troops and their US allies out of the country.
Prime Minister Tony Blair has promised that British officials and military will do everything possible to free the men.
The special SAS rapid reaction unit, which was sent to free 76-year-old Christian peace activist Norman Kember in Baghdad last year, has been put on alert.
Mr Blair, speaking during a trip to Libya, said: "We will do everything we possibly can to help."
Yesterday COBRA - the Government's emergency crisis management committee met - in 10 Downing Street, putting the SAS on alert.
Abu Hussein, based in Basra, quickly claimed responsibility: "It is not only a reaction but it is the end of the British here.
We will take revenge on the British."
If his claim is correct the move may be a reaction to the killing last week in Basra of Abu Qadir, the leader of the Al-Mahdi army in the southern Iraqi city under British control.
The authorities in Iraq have been alert for a retaliatory strike since he was shot by Iraqi special forces in a mission supported by British troops.
British sources were treating the claim with caution as insurgent groups often make claims even if they are not responsible.
One senior Whitehall source said: "We don't yet know if the kidnappings were linked to the Basra killing."
If they are, it could make talks difficult but there are existing channels through the Iraqi government to speak to the Shia insurgents.
If on the other hand, the abductions were the work of one of the shadowy Sunni groups linked to Al-Qaida in Iraq it could be difficult to find anyone to negotiate with.
Such groups are believed to have been responsible for most of the killings of kidnap victims in Iraq including Britons Kenneth Bigley, aged 62 and Margaret Hassan, aged 59.
The financier was a consultant working for BearingPoint, which provides technical and computer advice to the Iraqi government, while the security guards worked for GardaWorld, a Canadian company with offices in London and Hereford.
A spokesman for the firm said: "We are notifying all the families of the hostages and we're trying to determine exactly what happened."
Want to read yourself in print? Every day the Evening News publishes a selection of online comments on the letters page of the paper.
Pick up a copy to see if your views have been published.
I think most of the westerners who've been kidnapped in Iraq are freed by cash donations to the kidnappers. Amazingly, most Americans Europeans that are kidnapped do get later on freed - and cash donations are the only explanation.
For those interested my friend whose nephew was injured in Iraq IED explosion in Iraq on May 22 has new info. The 20-year old is going to lose almost all his fingers. They also had to take off his right buttocks almost to the bone as shrapnel wound was not healing.
They're considering taking off 1 or more limbs because healing is too slow. Even with the best medical care it is quite a battle to fight off the infection.
There were 10 Americans killed Monday.
and there were another 12 killed on Tuesday.
May has had 116 Americans killed so far, the bloodiest month for us since 2004.
oh the young fellow I referred to in #1 has now got a colostomy bag, but it will (if healing goes well) only be for 6-12 months.
SAS on standby - that´s a joke. Those poor unfortunate people have only 2 hopes, no hope and Bob Hope.
Wally.
.. I gotta ask.
.. did you not try and prevent this young man from joining the army?
I need to know because I also tried and failed a sons friend...
he joined the Royal Marines here...
but so far hes been ok...
lucky maybe...
. hes in Afghanistan at the moment.
It's the same old story, they never learn!
These events are predictable but the Americans and the Brits won't walk a mile in Arab shoes, they look at the situation through foreign eyes and continually get caught napping time after time. The militants with smaller number are running rings around foreign armies and will continue to do so. The occupation and attempted democratisation of Iraq is a failure, and far to many innocents have died attempting to force democracy upon an ancient culture.
Let the Iraqi people decide for themselves and not have foreign powers intefering in Iraq's internal affairs. Too many soldiers lives have been wasted, heroes led by donkeys, history repeating itself.
Tankan.
.. Yup.
.. Agreed 100%
Halitosis in 4: I don't really know the nephew, I only hear of him from my friend.
But for my own nephew I did tell him very strongly when he was a senior in high school that joining the military was a bad idea. and he went and joined anyway. He is still finishing up college, but he will go in the Marines after college.
His mother influences him (she is pro-war) as well as the mass media.
#5, that's funny because I saw an awful lot of the members of that ancient culture risking life and limb to elect their government. That is when the Iraqi people decided for themselves.
The Jews are just as ancient as the Arabs, and they managed to adapt quite well. What you are proposing is that all those people be left in the middle of a civil war fought by extremists. That does not constitute a decision amongst themselves.
Nevertheless, that is what will happen.
News RSS