Free Republic

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. and Iraqi forces are trying to secure the release of a group of up to 60 Shi'ite Muslims being held hostage in a town south of Baghdad, where rising sectarian tensions threaten to provoke armed conflict. Shi'ite officials in Baghdad said they believed as many as 60 hostages were being held in Madaen, a town 25 miles southeast of the capital, after being seized by Sunni gunmen late on Friday. The gunmen have threatened to kill the hostages unless Shi'ites leave the town, the Shi'ite officials said. But a senior police source in Baghdad said the...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Sunni guerrillas took at least 60 people hostage in an Iraqi town near Baghdad on Friday and threatened to kill them unless Shi'ites left the area, a Shi'ite official quoted residents as saying. The hostage-taking and three successive days of bombings which killed at least 34 people suggested insurgents had regrouped after a lull in violence since Jan. 30 elections. "People from the town called me begging the Iraqi government to save their relatives who are hostages. They told me there are at least 60 hostages," the official, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters in...

Assassination of a representative of the ayatollah Sistani in the south of Baghdad A representative of the Large ayatollah Shiite Ali Sistani like his son and four bodyguards were assassinated Wednesday evening in the south of Baghdad, indicated Thursday the office of the religious dignitary in the Holy City Shiite of Najaf. "Cheikh Mahmoud Al-Madahaïni, his son and four bodyguards were assassinated whereas they returned of the prayer of the evening in Salman Pak ", with ten km in the south of Baghdad, one added same sources.