Baghdad • An Iraqi farmer said yesterday that that he saw seven heavily armed gunmen capture two American soldiers during an attack on a road checkpoint south of Baghdad, while US troops searched for their comrades for a second day.
Another Iraqi said the Americans were offering $100,000 for information leading to the abductors, but the US command denied that. The White House promised to do everything it could to find the soldiers and said it had a message for anybody who may have taken the two men: “Give them back.”
Gunmen, meanwhile, kidnapped 10 bakery workers in Baghdad, and a mortar attack killed four people in the capital. Police also found 17 bodies around the city, including four women and a teenager handcuffed and shot in the head — apparently the latest victims of sectarian death squads.
While suffering the new blows to his effort to restore security in Baghdad, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki pushed ahead with negotiations on a plan for reconciling the country’s ethnic and religious communities. But his proposal, which would include a limited pardon for insurgents has been snarled by stark differences on that issue among the various groups, legislators said.
US troops, backed by helicopters and warplanes, fanned out across the “Triangle of Death” south of Baghdad searching for the two missing servicemen, but the military offered no new information after saying on Saturday that at least four raids had been carried out.
Ahmed Khalaf Falah, a farmer who said he witnessed the abduction of the Americans on Friday, said three Humvees were manning a US checkpoint near Youssifiyah, about 12 miles south of Baghdad, when they came under fire from many directions. Two Humvees chased after the assailants, but the third was attacked before it could move, he said. Seven masked gunmen, including one carrying what appeared to be a heavy machine gun, killed the driver of the third vehicle, then took the other two soldiers captive, Falah said.
Falah said tensions were high in the area as US troops raided some houses and detained men in looking for the missing soldiers. He said the Americans were setting up checkpoints on all roads leading into the area of the attack and helicopters were hovering at low altitudes.
A Youssifiyah resident, who said his house was searched by US soldiers yesterday afternoon, said the Americans were using translators to offer $100,000 for information leading to those who took the soldiers. The US military denied a reward had been offered.
The man in Youssifiyah said he would not cooperate. “I will not do it even if they pay $1m,” he said. “They deserve all that they are facing ... we are living a hard life because of them.”
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said the soldiers appeared to have been taken prisoner. “Hopefully they will be found and released as soon as possible,” he said.
Elsewhere in Iraq, US and Iraqi troops met little resistance as they established new outposts in southern Ramadi in an operation aimed at denying supplies to insurgents in Iraq’s biggest Sunni Arab city. US commanders said the move wasn’t the precursor to a rumoured assault to drive out insurgents along the lines of the 2004 attack in Fallujah, but rather an “isolation” tactic.
Iraqi woman ‘spy’ kidnapped
paris • The Al Qaeda-linked Islamist group Ansar Al Sunna said that it has kidnapped an Iraqi woman translator whom it accuses of working as a spy for the US army. “Your brothers the heroes of Kirkuk were able to take hostage one of the most important collaborators of the rafida,” an Internet statement said. “She is named Salma Jassem Hammadi and works as a translator in the large US base in Tikrit... and gathers information on the mujahedeen in Kirkuk,” said the statement.
