Gunmen kidnap deputy Iraqi health minister - aide
Source: Reuters
(Updates with Interior Ministry, more detail) BAGHDAD, Nov 19 (Reuters) - Gunmen in camouflage uniforms kidnapped an Iraqi deputy health minister from his Baghdad home on Sunday, underlining the challenge facing Iraq's government in curbing rampant violence that is gripping the country. Ammar al-Saffar, a member of Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al -Maliki's Dawa party, was taken away by gunmen wearing army uniforms accompanied by three men in suits, a neighbour and his aide, who both declined to be identified, told Reuters. An Interior Ministry official said the gunmen arrived in six vehicles at the home Saffar shared with his sister in the mainly Sunni neighbourhood of Adhamiya in northern Baghdad just after sunset. The neighbour said he did not witness the kidnapping but was told about it by Saffar's guards, who had dropped him off at home earlier and were summoned back shortly afterwards by his frantic family following the abduction. Details were sketchy, but it appeared to be another act of violence of the kind plaguing Iraq daily and showed the ability of armed groups to attack even senior government figures. Baghdad is plagued by daily kidnappings, both political and criminal. In one of the biggest cases to date, men in camouflage uniform abducted dozens of staff and visitors from the Sunni-run Higher Education Ministry last week. The Sunni minister disputes an assertion by the Shi'ite-run Interior Ministry that all have since been freed. An Education Ministry official said more than 60 were still being held. Saffar, who spent years in exile in Britain where his family still lives, has served as a deputy health minister in successive Iraqi administrations since the U.S.-led invasion to oust Saddam Hussein in March 2003. The abduction followed Saturday's killing in Baghdad of a leading member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, one of Dawa's allies in the government, and his wife in what appeared to be a sectarian assassination. Saffar survived an assassination attempt by gunmen in June 2004. "I believe human life is the most precious thing there is," Saffar said in an interview in August in which he accused Sunni insurgents of deliberately trying to create a brain drain by targeting doctors and scientists.
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