Baghdad – Dozens of U.S. Humvees and Bradley Fighting Vehicles took up positions around Sadr City at nightfall Wednesday as American forces pressed the search for five Britons kidnapped in a raid that Iraqi officials said was carried out by the Mahdi Army Shiite militia.
A secret incident report about the abductions Tuesday – written by Naj wa Fatih-Allah, director general of the Finance Ministry’s data-processing center, where the Britons were seized – quotes Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, as saying the Mahdi Army “will be profoundly sorry” if it carried out the assault.
Much of the Mahdi Army militia is said to be loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who resurfaced last week after nearly four months in hiding, apparently in Iran, and demanded U.S. troops leave Iraq.
Al-Sadr’s return appeared to be partly an effort to regain control over his militia, which had begun fragmenting.
It was unclear whether the 33-year-old cleric would have been aware of or condoned the kidnapping of the five British citizens.
About 11 a.m. Tuesday, dozens of men in army and police uniforms, Fatih-Allah’s report said, burst into the building, disarmed guards and went directly into the room where the five Britons were working. The five were seized and rushed out of the building to 19 waiting four- wheel-drive vehicles. The convoy then drove to the east.
The five kidnapped Britons included four bodyguards working for the Montreal-based security firm GardaWorld and one employee of BearingPoint, a McLean, Va.-based management-consulting firm.
Fatih-Allah’s report said U.S. troops surrounded the neighborhood around the center at dawn Wednesday and were joined by some British forces in an apparently fruitless house-to-house search for the men.
Mahdi Army members, who refused to allow use of their names for fear of arrest, said searching Sadr City was likely to be pointless. They said their organization, if involved, would have moved the Britons outside Baghdad.
The U.S. military said in a statement Wednesday it had arrested five suspected militants and one suspected leader of a militant cell during early-morning raids in Sadr City. Those arrested were believed part of a cell that smuggled weapons from Iran and sent militants to Iran for training, the statement said.
The statement did not link the raid to the missing men.
Police, Iraqi military, hospital and morgue officials reported a total of 72 people killed or found dead nationwide Wednesday.
The U.S. military late Wednesday reported the deaths of three more soldiers, two killed in a roadside bombing and one who died of a noncombat cause. The bombing victims died Wednesday, the third soldier Tuesday.
Their deaths raised to 119 the number of soldiers killed this month, the third-deadliest month of the war for U.S. troops.
In Washington, Brig. Gen. Perry Wiggins, deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the military believed a helicopter that crashed Monday north of Baghdad was brought down by small-arms fire.
The Islamic State of Iraq, an al-Qaeda front group, has claimed responsibility for shooting down the helicopter.
