Gunmen seize 10 workers from Baghdad bakery

updated 5:20 a.m. ET June 18, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Gunmen seized 10 workers from a bakery Sunday in a predominantly Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad, while police found the bodies of 11 other people shot elsewhere in Iraq.

The gunmen arrived in two cars, broke into the bakery in the northern suburb of Kazimiyah and abducted the 10 workers, police Lt. Mohammed Khayoun said. The kidnappings came a day after a mortar shell hit a well-known market in same neighborhood, killing four people and wounding 13.

It was one of a series of attacks that killed more than two dozen people Saturday despite heightened security, dealing a blow to the Iraqi government’s pledge to bring peace to the capital.

On Sunday, police found the bullet-riddled bodies of 10 men who apparently had been tortured in several areas of Baghdad, said Lt. Thaer Mahmoud.

The body of a man in his 20s was found in Karbala, 50 miles south of Baghdad, health authorities said. He had been shot in the head, and his body showed signs of torture.

A mortar shell hit the al-Sadiq University for Islamic Studies on Palestine Street, one of the capital’s main thoroughfares, wounding five students and a teacher, police Lt. Ahmed Qasim said.

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