Xinhua - English

Special report: Tension escalates in Iraq

BAGHDAD, March 2 (Xinhua) -- Iraqi Interior Ministry said on Friday it was investigating the alleged kidnapping of 14 policemen after an al-Qaida-linked group claimed it had seized 18 policemen to avenge the alleged rape of an Iraqi woman.

"We are now in the early stages of an investigation over the alleged kidnapping of 14 policemen who left Baquba to go on leave," said Brigadier General Abdul Karim Khalaf, the ministry's director of operations.

"The relatives of those policemen informed the Diyala police commander that their sons have not reach home," he said.

Earlier, an extremist Sunni militant group, linked to the al-Qaida group in Iraq, said it had kidnapped 18 employees of the Shiite-led interior ministry and threatened to kill them to avenge the alleged rape of an Iraqi woman.

"Lions from the Islamic state in Iraq succeeded in arresting 18 members of the interior ministry in Diyala in response to what these apostates have done in fighting the Sunnis, and one of their recent act is the rape of our sister in religion," the group said in an internet statement.

The statement, which could be independently verified, demanded handover of the police officers who are accused of raping a woman last month in western Baghdad and the release all the women detained in the governmental prisons.

The group issued a web statement with photographs showing up to18 blindfolded men with their hands tied behind their backs. Some of them were wearing Iraqi military uniforms and others were in civilian clothing.

On Feb. 18, a 20-year-old woman from western Baghdad accused three Iraqi policemen of sexually assaulting her, but the Iraqi government cleared the policemen from rape accusation and instead ordered to commend them.

On Feb. 22, four Iraqi soldiers have been arrested for raping an ethnic Turkoman woman in the town of Tal Afar, some 400 km north of Baghdad.

Rape victims in the conservative Iraqi society rarely go to publicity because they fear public scorn and humiliation.

BAGHDAD, March 2 (Xinhua) -- An extremist Sunni militant group, linked to the al-Qaida group in Iraq, said on Friday it had kidnapped 18 employees of the Shiite-led interior ministry and threatened to kill them to avenge the alleged rape of an Iraqi woman.