A CONVOY of gunmen dressed as Iraqi security forces drove into one of the safest parts of Baghdad yesterday and kidnapped 26 people from the Iraqi-American Chamber of Commerce and a shop.

The attack in Karada, a mixed community of Shias, Sunnis and Christians, was the latest in a series of mass abductions that have included the taking at gunpoint of the entire Olympic Committee and the national taekwondo team as well as the regular rounding up of passengers at bus stations and offices.

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

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

Police said that among those kidnapped was the head of the chamber, made up largely of Iraqi businessmen who have lived in America.

Karada is controlled by the Badr Brigade, the armed wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which forms the main party in the Shia governing coalition. Locals say that almost nothing moves in the area without the Badr militiamen knowing about it. But flags of the Mahdi Army, the rival Shia militia loyal to the cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, have started appearing in the area. Locals fear a bloody power struggle.

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

Kidnappings are often carried out for profit in Baghdad. A Sunni man from east Baghdad told The Times how he was abducted by gunmen a month ago as he closed his shop. He thought he had been saved when the kidnappers’ car was stopped by police, who asked why he was blindfolded. But the gunmen said that they were from the Mahdi Army, and were waved through.

He was held for a week until his family paid a $25,000 (£13,400) ransom. Few are so lucky.

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