Gunmen kill 11 electricity workers in Iraq

By Mustafa Mahmoud

KIRKUK, Iraq (Reuters) - Gunmen killed 11 electricity plant workers in northern Iraq on Wednesday after stopping their vehicle and machinegunning them as they sat inside, Iraqi police and army officials said.

Police also said 18 goat herders from an extended Shi'ite family were kidnapped near the holy Shi'ite city of Kerbala, 110 km (68 miles) southwest of Baghdad, on Tuesday. It was the second mass kidnapping in a week.

Iraqi and U.S. military commanders have warned that militants are shifting the focus of their attacks to outside Baghdad, where thousands of U.S. and Iraqi troops have taken to the streets to crack down on sectarian bloodletting.

Police said gunmen ambushed the vehicle carrying power plant workers in a mainly Sunni area near Hawija, about 70 km southwest of the northern city of Kirkuk.

"Gunmen took advantage of the fact there were no police or army patrols. They stopped the vehicle, sprayed it with gunfire and then fled," said Lieutenant-Colonel Khalil Zobaie of the Iraqi army's 4th Division, 2nd Brigade.

Seven of the workers died instantly while four others were fatally wounded and died later in hospital, police said.

It was not clear whether the attack was linked to an ambush in the same area on Saturday, when gunmen shot dead eight civilian employees of an Iraqi military base. Four brothers were among the dead in that incident.

Police in Nikhaib, west of Kerbala, said gunmen in four or five vehicles kidnapped the 18 Shi'ite goat herders, including two teenage girls, and then drove off in the direction of Anbar province, heartland of the Sunni insurgency.