A convoy of gunmen dressed as Iraqi security forces drove into one of the safest parts of Baghdad today and kidnapped 26 people from the US-Iraqi Chamber of Commerce and a neighbouring phone shop.

The brazen attack in Karada, a mixed community of Shia, Christians and Sunnis, was the latest in a series of mass abductions that have seen the entire Olympic Committee herded off at gunpoint, the disappearance of the national taekwondo team and regular round-ups of passengers at bus stations and offices.

Fifteen vehicles full of armed men in military fatigues pulled up outside the US-Iraqi Chamber of Commerce. The gunmen then split into two groups, one of them rounding up 11 people from the trade organization and the other 15 staff and customers from a mobile phone shop next door.

"They were in camouflage army uniforms," said one witness. "They handcuffed the men and blindfolded them... Me and five others were left behind because all the cars were full."

Police said among those kidnapped was the head of the chamber, made up largely of Iraqi businessmen who have lived in America and are trying to boost trade ties.

Karada is controlled by the Badr Brigade, the armed wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which forms the main party in the Shia governing coalition. Locals say almost nothing moves in the area without the Badr militiamen knowing about it.

However, flags of the the Mahdi Army, the rival Shia militia loyal to the rebellious young cleric Hojatoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr, have started appearing in the area. Locals fear a bloody power struggle.

Last week 17 people, including five women and two children, were kidnapped from two apartments in Karada by men dressed as Iraqi police commandos.

Kidnappings are often carried out for profit in Baghdad. A Sunni man from east Baghdad told The Times how he was abducted a month ago as he was closing his computer shop a month ago by gunmen in civilian clothes.

They blindfolded him and drove off. The man thought he was saved when the car was stopped at a checkpoint and the police asked why the gunmen had a blindfolded person in the vehicle. But when the gunmen said they were from the Mahdi Army the policemen waved them through.

The shop-owner was held in the Mahdi Army stronghold of Sadr City, a Shia slum in the northeast of Baghdad, for a week before his family paid a $25,000 ransom. Few are so lucky.

• Elsewhere in Iraq today, 27 people were killed by suicide bombs and drive-by shootings. Four Iraqi soldiers died in an explosion in Mosul while 9 people were shot in street violence in Baghdad. More than 180,000 Iraqis have fled their homes since mid-February to escape sectarian violence, according to the Iraqi Government.

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