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Iraq Police Search for Algerian Diplomats | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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BAGHDAD, Iraq, AP – Police tightened security in an upscale Baghdad neighborhood Friday as the search intensified for two Algerian diplomats kidnapped there. At least 16 people died in attacks in Baghdad and elsewhere.

More police were on the streets and motorists reported extra checkpoints Friday in the western Baghdad neighborhood of Mansour, where top Algerian envoy Ali Belaroussi, 62, and fellow Algerian diplomat, Azzedine Belkadi, 47, were seized the day before. They were not traveling with bodyguards, officials said.

The kidnappings brought to five the number of key diplomats from Islamic countries targeted in Baghdad in less than three weeks in an attempt to undermine support for the Iraqi government among Arab and Muslim nations.

Police officials said they suspected the diplomats and their kidnappers may still be in the Mansour area because witnesses reported the abduction too quickly for the gunmen to have gone far.

Egypt”s top envoy, Ihab al-Sherif, was seized at gunpoint in another western Baghdad neighborhood on July 2, also without security. Three days later, gunmen opened fire on senior envoys from Pakistan and Bahrain in separate attacks police described as kidnap attempts.

The Pakistani diplomat”s security guards returned fire and the assailants fled. The Bahraini, who was slightly wounded, had no bodyguards, but a traffic policeman saw the attack, fired his pistol in the air and the assailants fled, police said.

Al-Qaida”s wing in Iraq, the country”s most feared terror group, claimed responsibility in Web statements for kidnapping al-Sherif and later claimed to have killed him. It warned Muslim nations against ties with Baghdad.

Also in Baghdad, gunmen fired on a car carrying a newlywed couple and their families on Friday, killing the 23-year-old bride and wounding the Iraqi army captain she had just married.

The attack came after Iraqi army Capt. Wissam Abdul-Wahab and his new bride, Sally, were picked up by their families after spending their wedding night at a hotel. They were ambushed in Baghdad”s southern Dora neighborhood.

&#34My poor Sally, she was very happy yesterday,&#34 sobbed her mother-in-law Latifah Mohammed.

Four people — one Iraqi soldier and three civilians — were killed in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, during clashes there, police said. The other 11 victims were Iraqi police or soldiers killed in scattered, small-scale attacks throughout Baghdad.

Also Friday, the U.S. military announced that a Marine was killed the day before in a roadside bombing while conducting combat operations west of Baghdad. At least 1,774 members of the U.S. military had died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

U.S. and Iraqi officials hope that progress on the political front will in time undermine the Sunni Arab-led insurgency and restore stability that has deteriorated sharply since U.S.-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.

A key step is the new constitution, which is to be approved by parliament by Aug. 15. Two months later, the charter goes before Iraqi voters in a referendum. If the document is approved, voters will choose a new government in mid-December elections.

The drafters of the constitution may leave some contentious issues — the borders of a Kurdish self-governing region and a formula to divvy up oil revenues — unresolved in order to finish the document by a mid-August deadline, a Western diplomat familiar with the deliberations said.

Prospects for meeting the deadline were thrown in doubt last week when Sunni Arab members of the drafting committee suspended their participation after the assassination of two colleagues.

Nasir al-Ani, one of the Sunni members, said he and his colleagues would not attend Saturday”s scheduled meeting of the commission.

The Western diplomat said the committee may leave issues such as borders of the Kurdish self-rule area and the distribution of oil revenue unresolved and subject to a decision by parliament later. Other issues such as women”s rights and the role of Islam also remain undecided but will likely be resolved, the diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish member of the committee, complained the Americans were pressuring the Iraqis to meet the deadline &#34so that President Bush can tell his people that the job is done.&#34

&#34They want it for their internal affairs not for the Iraqis,&#34 Othman said.

Meanwhile, Syria claimed its border guards were fired on by U.S. and Iraqi troops. A statement issued Thursday cited &#34about 100 armed clashes, some of which were carried out by American soldiers who opened fire randomly.&#34 It did not elaborate.

Maj. Gen. Stephen Johnson, the top commander for U.S. forces in western Iraq, including the border area near Syria, said he had no reports of such cross-border fire.

&#34(I) certainly haven”t had any recent reports of any cross-border firing at those sites up there in our area of responsibility. We”d had a couple in the past, but they”ve been investigated and we were unable to determine where the rounds came from,&#34 he said.