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IRAQ: RAIDED IN SEARCH OF ABDUCTED GUARDS November 18, 2006
Zainab Osman
(SomaliNet) American and British military forces battled gunmen in southern Iraq on Friday while searching for four American security guards and their Austrian colleague who were abducted from a supply convoy on Thursday by men wearing Iraqi police uniforms.
Since the war began, this is the largest kidnapping to take place, so far no evidence has been offered yet as to who may have kidnapped them. It took place just north of the town of Safwan near the Iraq-Kuwait border, a Shiite-dominated area where violence between competing militias has worsened in the past year.
"The scope of this hijacking took a significant amount of coordination," said Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the spokesman for the American military command in Baghdad. "It was very well planned and orchestrated and deliberately conducted."
The supply convoy, made up of 43 heavy trucks and six security vehicles, had driven into Iraq from Kuwait when it was stopped at what appeared to be a police checkpoint near Safwan on Thursday, said Michael McClellan, a spokesman for the United States Embassy in Baghdad. The armed men at the checkpoint seized 14 men from the convoy, the 5 Western security guards and 9 Asian drivers, and made off with 19 trucks and a security vehicle.
Within a half-mile of the ambush, the attackers released the nine drivers, said a spokesman for the Crescent Security Group, a Kuwait-based company that handled security for the convoy. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly by his company.