One person was killed on Wednesday when a roadside bomb exploded near a government convoy in Baghdad. The bomb had apparently targeted Iraq's Minister of Interior, Bayan Jabor, though he was not present in the convoy at the time.
Ministry sources, according to Reuters, said that the convoy was attacked shortly after it had the ministry compound to refuel.
Also on Wednesday, a regime member of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was killed by gunmen as he traveled through western Baghdad in his vehicle.
According to the AP, the victim was forced off the road he was driving on by the gunmen and then shot to death.
A roadside bomb which exploded in the capital on Wednesday killed two policemen when it exploded near their convoy. Eight other Iraqis were also wounded in the attack.
A separate roadside bomb killed four Iraqi civilians and wounded two others in the town of Falluja.
Dumped bodies raise fears of sectarian reprisals
Also on Wednesday, Iraqi police reported the discovery of 18 bodies of bound and blindfolded men were found in a commercial minivan in Baghdad late Tuesday night.
Police are still unsure of the men's identities and whether or not they are all Sunni or Shiite. Mixed reports have also surfaced as to how the men were killed; earlier, reports claimed that some believed that they had been suffocated to deathm though medical experts now suspect that all the men were hanged to death.
The discovery, according to Reuters, was made in a mainly Sunni district of Baghdad, known for similarly violent incidents.
Authorities fear that if the bodies are found to be of one sectarian identity, major reprisals could ensue.
Also on Wednesday, the bodies of two other people were found bound and blindfolded. The two were thought to have been shot to death.
Sunni Arabs in Iraq have accused the now Shiite led, US-backed security apparatus of running death squads against them, though Shiites have denied the accusation.
Many attacks in Baghdad have also been carried out by Sunnis against Shiite targets.
Execution-style deaths and the dumping of the victims' bodies has been a growing phenomenon in recent months in Iraq, attesting to what some officials have called a "dirty war" on the part of rival sectarian factions.
Kidnapping
In another incident, gunmen in camouflage uniforms stormed the offices of a private security company and kidnapped as many as 50 employees, police reported. According to the AP, the attackers hit the al-Rawafid Security Co., a private Iraqi-owned business, at 4:30 p.m. and forced the workers into seven vehicles, including several white SUVs, said Interior Ministry Maj. Felah Al-Mohammedawi.
© 2006 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
