Gunmen Kidnap 2 Egyptians in Baghdad

BAGHDAD â€”  Gunmen kidnapped two Egyptian employees at a mobile-phone company’s office in Baghdad, government officials said today.

The kidnapping happened late Thursday in the upscale Harthiya neighborhood, said an Interior Ministry official, Col. Adnan Abdel-Rahman. The two engineers were driven away in a black BMW, he said.

A rash of kidnappings has underscored the vulnerability of Iraq’s U.S.-backed interim government, even in the heart of the capital, where two Americans and a Briton were seized from their home last week. The two Americans were beheaded, and an Al Qaeda-linked group has threatened to kill the British hostage.

Two Italian women aid workers were also seized from their office on Sept. 7. Two statements surfaced on the Internet this week claiming that they too had been killed, but the Italian government has said the claims are unreliable.

On the day of the latest kidnappings, U.S. warplanes fired on insurgent targets in the Baghdad slum of Sadr City as fighting continued in the Shiite Muslim militia stronghold.

Iraqi doctors said one person was killed and 12 were injured.

U.S. warplanes and helicopters roared overhead and residents said explosions could be heard for hours.

No American casualties were reported in Sadr City. The military said a member of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force had died. He was killed Wednesday while on patrol in Al Anbar province, officials said.

At least 1,034 American service members have died since the beginning of the conflict.

In violence elsewhere Thursday, gunmen killed a senior official of Iraq’s North Oil Co. in the northern city of Mosul, and saboteurs attacked an oil well near Baghdad and a pipeline in the south, officials said.

Sana Toma Sulaiman was fatally shot as he headed to work in a taxi in Mosul, said Hazim Jallawi, a government spokesman.

In Rashidiya, about 15 miles north of Baghdad, saboteurs blew up an oil well, setting it on fire, said Jassim Dulaimi, who is in charge of security at the area’s oilfields.

Saboteurs also attacked a pipeline with explosives Thursday in the southern city of Najaf, stopping the flow of oil from fields near the city to a refinery in the southern city of Basra, an official with the South Oil Co. said.