Shi'ite militia may have kidnapped Britons in Iraq

By Mariam Karouny and Ahmed Rasheed

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's foreign minister said on Wednesday he suspected Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia was behind the abduction of five Britons from a government building in Baghdad.

U.S. and Iraqi troops raided Baghdad neighbourhoods overnight, including the Mehdi Army stronghold of Sadr City, in a hunt for the Britons, who were kidnapped in an audacious daylight raid by dozens of gunmen, police and residents said.

A senior Iraqi government official said Tuesday's kidnappings could be in retaliation for the killing of the militia's top commander by British-backed Iraqi special forces in the southern city of Basra last week.

"It may be the Mehdi Army because the location of the (kidnapping) is in their theatre of operations," Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari told Reuters.

"Their safety is our top priority ... I don't think they will finish them. They are using them for bargaining, but they have not contacted anybody yet."

British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said British officials were working with Iraqi authorities to find out how the Britons were abducted and to secure their swift release.

Interior Ministry spokesman Brigadier-General Abdul-Kareem Khalaf dismissed suggestions that the kidnappers, who were dressed in police commando camouflage uniforms and driving official vehicles, were a renegade unit from his ministry.

Interior Ministry forces are known to be heavily infiltrated by Shi'ite militias, including the Mehdi Army, and have often been accused of kidnappings and sectarian murders.