IRAQ: Gunmen in police uniforms kidnapped 17 people from a central Baghdad apartment building in broad daylight yesterday, interior ministry sources said, underlining lawlessness afflicting the country.
The latest abductions came a day after US president George Bush and Iraq's prime minister agreed in Washington that more US and Iraqi troops will move into the city to try to curb sectarian violence that has raised fears of civil war.
The kidnappers abducted 10 men, five women and two children from different families living in the building, hours after Mr Bush conceded at a news conference that violence in the Iraqi capital was a pressing problem.
Militants and criminal gangs all carry out kidnappings in Iraq, but most of the abductions that can run into dozens of people have sectarian motivations.
Many victims are found dead with bullet wounds and signs of torture in a country where 100 people are killed every day, according to the latest UN estimates.
The new security plan agreed by Mr Bush and Nuri al-Maliki was an acknowledgement that the Shia Islamist prime minister's recent security crackdown in the capital had failed.
It was unclear how the new plan would affect Pentagon hopes of reducing US troop numbers in Iraq by the end of the year end. Republicans had hoped a troop reduction would help them deflect voter anger over Iraq in November elections.
There are now 127,000 US troops in Iraq. US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the increase in forces in the Baghdad area will be "more than hundreds," but was no more precise.
The range of violence in Iraq yesterday showed how difficult it might be to ease bloodshed, which has forced 162,000 people to claim aid as refugees in their own country and seen many thousands of others flee the country.
Aside from the kidnappings, violence included gunmen shooting at a police convoy in Nahrawan, south of Baghdad. Gunmen on a motorcycle sprayed three men with bullets at a wedding ceremony in the central city of Kerbala, medical sources said.
In Baghdad, gunmen abducted police brigadier Abdullah Hmood, the director of the residency office, police sources said.
In Baghdad's heavily fortified green zone government compound, Saddam Hussein stood in court and said he would rather face a firing squad than a hangman if he is convicted on charges of crimes against humanity.
Weak from 20 days of a hunger strike, he remained defiant, vowing to inspire his loyalists to drive out US troops.