BAGHDAD, 22 July 2005 — Gunmen kidnapped two Algerian envoys in Baghdad yesterday, the latest in a series of guerrilla strikes that have driven diplomats from the Iraqi capital.
The gunmen, who were in two cars, snatched Algerian mission chief Ali Billaroussi off the street outside a restaurant along with diplomatic attaché Azzedine bin Fadi, police sources said.
“We have set up an emergency unit and we are following the situation closely,” Algerian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdelhamid Chebchoub said.
Earlier this month Egyptian envoy Ihab Al-Sherif was kidnapped by Al-Qaeda’s Iraq wing, which later said it had killed him and vowed more attacks on diplomats in Baghdad.
The Egyptian had been expected to become the first Arab diplomat in Baghdad with the full title of ambassador since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, an important symbolic milestone.
Two days after he was kidnapped, gunmen fired on cars carrying the envoys of Pakistan and Bahrain, triggering an exodus of diplomats. Some embassies scaled back their operations over security fears.
Saddam appeared before Iraq’s war crimes tribunal yesterday to hear new accusations against him, according to a video tape broadcast by the Arabic satellite television station Al-Arabiya.
The footage showed a tribunal official reading out accusations against Saddam relating to the treatment of the Faili Kurds, a Shiite minority among the mostly Sunni Muslim Kurdish population. Saddam protested several times, interrupting the official.
The Iraqi authorities and their US backers are hoping diplomacy and politics can defuse the insurgency by drawing restive Sunnis into the political process in Iraq and undermining their support from Arabs abroad.
But the insurgents have picked their targets carefully. On Tuesday, gunmen assassinated a Sunni member of the committee drawing up Iraq’s new constitution, placing new questions over whether the draft can be completed by an Aug. 15 deadline.
Sunnis suspended their work on the committee in response.
