BAGHDAD, 30 September 2005 — US forces raided the homes of two officials from a prominent Sunni organization yesterday, arresting bodyguards and confiscating weapons, Sunni officials said.

Adnan Al-Dulaimi, secretary-general of the Conference for Iraq’s People, said soldiers in tanks and Humvees, with two helicopters circling overhead, broke into his home in western Baghdad at 2:30 a.m., put him and his family in one room, and searched the house.

“It was as if they were attacking a castle, not the home of a normal person who advises Iraq’s interim government and has called for reconciliation and renounced sectarianism,” Al-Dulaimi told a news conference after the raid.

The other raid took place at the Baghdad home of Harith Al-Obeidi, another senior official in the organization, said Iraq’s largest Sunni political party, the Iraqi Islamic Party.

“This act of humiliation...derails our efforts to encourage Sunnis to take part in the political process,” said Al-Dulaimi, urging Washington to stop such actions.

The two organizations are urging Sunnis to vote “no” on the constitution, which their leaders believe will divide Iraq into Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni areas, with the Sunni region having the least power and revenue.

The Iraqi Islamic Party condemned the two raids as “a savage act” and an “unjustifiable aggression” saying such treatment of “good Iraqis” could set back efforts to persuade citizens to join efforts to improve security in the country.

Al-Dulaimi is a prominent critic of the Shiite-led government. On Aug. 30, at a joint news conference with US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, he called for dismissing the country’s Shiite interior minister, accusing his security forces of massacring Sunnis. Al-Dulaimi warned that such killings “will only lead to troubles” at a time when US officials are encouraging Sunnis to accept the draft constitution.

New Center to Seek Missing Persons

UN officials yesterday announced the setting up of a center for missing people in Iraq against a background of spiraling violence that has raised the specter of sectarian war.

The National Center for Missing and Disappeared Persons in Iraq, which will operate under the auspices of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) and Iraq’s Ministry of Human Rights, will mainly deal with the “hundreds of thousands” who disappeared under ousted dictator Saddam Hussein.

But it will also be looking into more recent cases of numerous kidnappings and disappearances that have taken place since the 2003 US-led invasion of the country, according to John Pace, the head of UNAMI’s human rights office.

In a case illustrating such daily disappearances, the Anglican Church yesterday said the entire lay leadership of its Baghdad church, including three members of the same family, were feared dead after failing to return home from a road trip to Jordan.

“They are almost certainly dead,” said the Nicosia-based Reverend Clive Handford, president bishop of the Episcopal Church of Jerusalem and the Middle East.

They were last heard of on Sept. 13 after they were attacked on the road between Ramadi and Fallujah, west of the capital.

Some 600 cases of missing people have been reported since 2003, Pace said.