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University staffers held hostage in Iraq released
Kidnappers who kidnapped a large number of university employees in Iraq release them later.
BY OUR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
November 15, 2006
Hostages seized during a mass kidnapping in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad have been released following major police raids on Tuesday.
Shia militias in Baghdad are suspected to be behind the rampant kidnappings in the capital city. There are reports that the kidnappers chose only the Sunni men they came across leaving all Shias and all women free.
Reports from Baghdad said that armed men in the uniforms of police commandos had raided the Higher Education Ministry in Baghdad early morning on Tuesday and abducted scores of staff and visitors. Just under a hundred gunmen had arrived in a convoy of four-wheel drives, used by Iraq's security forces, wearing the blue uniform of the police commandos. They closed off the roads leading to the ministry before sweeping through the four-storey building and departing with their captives in no more than 15 minutes.
Meanwhile there are also reports that 25 hostages were still missing. There were no reports on whether there had been any injuries. The presidential office said that the rest of the hostages were freed shortly before midnight.
The Baghdad abductions at first led to an immediate order for all universities and colleges across the country to be shut until further notice. Amid fears that those taken hostage may be killed, the Iraqi Education Minister, Abed Theyeb, said: "I have only one choice and that is to suspend classes at universities. We have no other choice, I am not ready to see more professors get killed." The closure order was lifted later after the government lowered the number of people snatched from 150 to 50, and said that 20 had been released.
It may be recalled that around 160 Iraqi academics have been killed since the invasion, and thousands more have fled the country, many of them women who have been warned not to work.
Meanwhile elsewhere, security forces reported 89 dead bodies found yesterday, many of them with hands tied behind their backs and bearing marks of torture. As many as 21 people were killed and 25 injured outside Sadr City.
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