Red Crescent closes in Baghdad after a mass kidnapping

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Source: CCTV.com | 12-19-2006 11:02

Violence continues in Baghdad. And now the international humanitarian organization, the Red Crescent, has been forced to close down in Baghdad. The move comes one day after gunmen staged a mass kidnapping at the agency.

The Iraqi Red Crescent suspended operations in Baghdad after thirty people were kidnapped from one of its offices on Sunday. Police said the gunmen arrived in five pickup trucks.

Seventeen of those kidnapped have been released, but 19 are still being held.

Secretary-General of Iraqi Red Crescent, Mazin Abdellaha said, " We asked some of those who are already free and they don't know who they kidnapped them. They just said that they were military men with the uniform of Iraqi police."

The Red Crescent is part of the international Red Cross movement. It's the only Iraqi aid agency working in all of the country's 18 provinces. It employs a staff of one thousand staff and has a further two-hundred-thousand volunteers.

The Iraqi Defense Ministry said the kidnappers were likely to be "the same groups" as were responsible for similar attacks in recent months.

Meanwhile, a car bomb has exploded at the entrance to a vegetable market in the south of the city, killing five people and wounding 19. Police say the blast took place in the mostly Sunni Saidiya district.

Earlier in the day, another roadside bomb exploded near a market in the another Sunni district, Doura, also in southern Baghdad, wounding seven.

Markets are a common target for the bombers, as sectarian conflict in Iraq continues to escalate, fueling fears of an all-out civil war.

Editor:Du Xiaodan