24 Iraqis kidnapped after gunmen attack stores

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Masked gunmen, many in military uniform, stormed into a currency exchange and two electronic stores in broad daylight Tuesday, kidnapping 24 Iraqis and making off with tens of thousands of dollars.\nThe stunning string of mass kidnappings continued Tuesday when gunmen stormed into three Baghdad businesses and left with bundles of cash and 24 Iraqi hostages.\nThe attacks occurred within a 30-minute period, and police were investigating whether they were linked.\nPolice Lt. Col. Falah al-Mohammedawi said the assailants were likely insurgents who were running out of money.\nThe 15 gunmen who stormed the currency exchange in Baghdad's southwest Harthiyah neighborhood at about 1 p.m. wore military uniforms, but arrived in civilian cars. They stole tens of thousands of dollars and millions of Iraqi dinars before taking six people from the store, police said.\nAbout the same time, seven gunmen wearing civilian clothes ran into a Daewoo International electronics store in the downtown Karradah district and kidnapped three employees, including the store manager, police said. They did not appear to have taken any money, al-Mohammedawi said.\nAt 1:30 p.m., gunmen also wearing military uniforms, masks and helmets stormed a different branch of the same electronics company on Palestine Street in eastern Baghdad and grabbed 15 employees, al-Mohammedawi said. The kidnappers arrived in 16 civilian cars.\nThe mass kidnappings came a day after gunmen abducted 16 employees of an Iraqi trading company in Baghdad's upscale Mansour neighborhood.\nThey also wore uniforms and masks and showed up in four civilian cars at the headquarters of the Saeed Import and Export Co. Police said the kidnappers went through papers and computer files before leaving with their captives, al-Mohammedawi said.\nRafidh Salim Saleh, a worker at the company who avoided capture, said the firm had been operating in Iraq for more than 30 years and was involved with an electricity project in Youssifiyah, south of Baghdad.\n"The company has no political or terrorist ties or any activities that are anti-government," he said. "We don't even keep a gun."\nWith 40 Iraqis taken hostage in less than 24 hours, politicians returned to talks on forming a government after a one-day boycott by Shiite leaders. The United Iraqi Alliance, the largest bloc in parliament, shunned talks Monday to protest a U.S.-backed raid on what Iraqis say was a mosque. At least 16 people were killed in the assault, which freed an Iraqi hostage.\nIn Washington, President Bush said he was "pleased to hear ... that the Iraqis are now back at the table."\nBush spoke a day after The Associated Press reported that U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad asked one of Iraq's most prominent Shiite politicians to seek the withdrawal of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari's contentious nomination for a second term.\nTwo aides to Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim told the AP that Khalilzad urged their boss during a meeting Saturday to personally deliver the message to al-Jaafari. Instead, lower-ranking members of al-Hakim's political bloc passed the U.S. message to members of al-Jaafari's party, who delivered it to him.\nThe United States has been pushing Iraq to speed up the formation of a unified government, seen as the best option to subdue the violence gripping several Iraqi cities -- and to allow for the start of a U.S. troop withdrawal this summer.\nBut the talks are fragile in a country with deep sectarian differences between Shiites and Sunnis and daily violent death tolls in the dozens. Well over 1,000 people have been killed since the Feb. 22 bombing of an important Shiite shrine.\nPolice discovered 17 more corpses Tuesday, all men from Baghdad who were handcuffed and shot in the head. A majority had been dumped under a bridge. Hundreds of bodies have been found since the shrine bombing, most believed the work of sectarian killers or death squads operating inside the Shiite-dominated Interior Ministry.\nDozens of other Iraqis were wounded and at least seven killed in drive-by shootings and car and roadside bombings Tuesday.\nGunmen trying to shoot a Tikrit council member killed his son instead, police said. Three Iraqis in the southern city of Nasiriyah died in a blast as they tried to plant a bomb at the house of an Iraqi journalist working for the U.S.-funded Iraqi television station Alhurra, the head of the Nasiriyah journalists' union said.\nTwo suicide bombers died after detonating their explosives in front of a police station in Iskandariyah, wounding 11 policemen and a female bystander, police Lt. Col. Khalil Abdul-Ridha said.\n--Associated Press writers Qassim Abdul-Zahra and Mariam Fam in Baghdad contributed to this report.