Iraq: gunmen hijacked 12 minibuses and kidnapped as many as 40 passengers

[sabra]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2430809,00.html

<snip>

Iraq slipped further into civil war today when gunmen hijacked 12 minibuses and kidnapped as many as 40 passengers outside Baghdad, while a car bomb left 15 people dead at a wedding party in the capital.

Between eight and 10 gunmen stopped the convoy of minibuses on the dangerous road heading north of Baghdad into mixed Sunni and Shia farmlands which have seen bouts of prolonged bouts of ethnic bloodletting in recent weeks.

The buses had left the main road to avoid an American checkpoint, an Interior Ministry official said, when they ran into a guerilla roadblock at Tarmiya, a well-known insurgent area.

Most of the passengers marched off to face probable execution were Shias heading to Balad, a town to the north which Shia militiamen purged of Sunnis two weeks ago in revenge for the beheading of 17 local Shia men.

[Kagemusha]

1. Oh that's just grand.

They get captured by guerillas because avoiding an American checkpoint feels like the saner, safer option.

Not that I have any idea what they were heading to Balad for. Edit: Well, er, if they were militiamen in disguise with their own weapons maybe that's why they would avoid a checkpoint. But I have no clue from where I sit so, I just wonder.

[MuseRider]

2. They chanced a side road

to avoid Americans. That says way too much all by itself. So now they are being marched off by gunmen who may very well kill them all. Lovin this democracy that we are helping them with. The freedom to choose between the Americans or a chance like that.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

3. a kick because this got buried before people could see it