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Gunmen Kill 8 Iraqi Electronic Workers

March 29, 2006 / 7:23 PM EST / CBS/AP

Gunmen lined up 14 employees of an electronics trading company in Baghdad on Wednesday and shot them all, killing eight and wounding six, police said.

Politicians working on forming a national unity government postponed talks scheduled for Wednesday, saying they needed more time to consult their political blocs about what the security powers of the prime minister should be.

The motive of the attack at the al-Ibtikar trading company in the upscale Mansour neighborhood was not immediately clear. According to survivors' accounts to police, the assailants first asked for the company's manager, who was not there, before shooting.

The survivors said the assailants, some of whom wore police uniforms, identified themselves as intelligence agents from the Interior Ministry.

Hundreds of Iraqis have been killed in sectarian violence and by death squads operating inside the Shiite-dominated ministry since the Feb. 22 bombing of an important Shiite shrine in Samarra set off a wave of revenge attacks. Usually, the victims are killed in secret, their bodies discovered hours or days later.

The assault Wednesday was the second to target a trading company in Mansour this week. On Monday, gunmen wearing military uniforms and masks kidnapped 16 employees from the headquarters of the Saeed Import and Export Co. Police said the assailants went through papers and computer files before leaving with their captives.

In other developments:

President George W. Bush said Wednesday that Saddam Hussein, not continued U.S. involvement in Iraq, is responsible for ongoing sectarian violence that is threatening the formation of a democratic government. In his third speech this month to bolster public support for the war, Mr. Bush worked to counter critics who say the U.S. presence in the war-torn nation is fueling the insurgency.

Another mass abduction took place Tuesday, when masked gunmen, many in military uniform, stormed into a currency exchange and two electronic stores in broad daylight, seized 24 Iraqis and took tens of thousands of dollars. The kidnappings occurred within a half-hour, and police were investigating whether they were linked.

Elsewhere, gunmen killed three staffers of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in a drive-by shooting in west Baghdad, Abdul-Razzaq said. A mortar round struck just outside al-Sadr's home in the holy city of Najaf earlier in the week. The firebrand anti-American leader, who holds great sway among poor Shiites in Baghdad, was at home but not hurt in the Sunday attack, according to an aide.

Also Wednesday, gunmen attacked a highway police patrol in western Baghdad, killing one policeman and wounding four others, including a civilian, police said. In south Baghdad, a sniper killed a policeman on patrol in the Dora neighborhood, and a roadside bomb in the east killed one policeman and wounded five other people, police said.

Nearly 20 others, including a 6-year-old girl, were wounded in the capital in roadside bombings, mortar attacks, gunfire and an explosion on a minibus, police said. Gunmen also wounded an official from the Iraqi Central Bank, then later chased a car carrying five of the official's guards and wounded them as well, police said.

There were several attacks Wednesday in Diyala province north of Baghdad. Gunmen killed two civilians and wounded another in a drive-by shooting in the town of Khalis, 50 miles north of the capital, police said. A roadside bomb in front of an Iraqi soldier's home outside the provincial capital of Baqouba wounded the soldier's 7-year-old son, and another bomb targeted the house of a tribal sheik in Baqouba but caused no casualties, police said.

An unmanned U.S. Air Force Predator fired a Hellfire missile at three Iraqis planting a roadside bomb near Balad Air Base north of Baghdad, killing all three, the U.S. military. Balad, 40 miles north of Baghdad, has become the logistics hub for all U.S. military operations in Iraq.

In Wednesday's attack, the gunmen arrived at the al-Ibtikar offices in five black BMWs about 8:15 a.m., police Lt. Maitham Abdul-Razzaq said. They burned parts of the facility, but didn't appear to have taken any money, he said. The dead included five men and three women.

"All these operations have one aim: to freeze life in Iraq and sabotage the democratic process. They want to take us back to the dictatorship," said Maj. Gen. Ahmed al-Khafaji, a deputy interior minister. He blamed al Qaeda and said, "We will work day and night to arrest them.

In other violence Tuesday, one U.S. soldier was killed and three were wounded when their Humvee was hit by a roadside bomb west of Baghdad, the military said. South of Baghdad, another U.S. soldier was killed by small-arms fire.

At least 2,325 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

Meanwhile, negotiations on the formation of a government remained stalled as leaders asked for more time.

The Shiite United Iraqi Alliance, the largest bloc in parliament, had 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.

After the one-day boycott, the talks resumed Tuesday, but Wednesday's session was canceled.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has 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.

The United States has been pushing Iraq to speed up the formation of a unity 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.

But the talks are fragile in a country with deep sectarian differences between Shiites and Sunnis and daily violent death tolls in the dozens. More than 1,000 people have been killed since the Samarra bombing.

Police discovered 17 bodies Tuesday, all men from Baghdad who were handcuffed and shot in the head. Hundreds of bodies have been found since the shrine bombing.

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