Three senior Iraqi officials were abducted, a man who worked for the U.S. occupation was beheaded and at least four others were killed in another day of violent incidents, Iraqi officials said Saturday.
Authorities in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit said Saturday that gunmen abducted a deputy governor of a central Iraqi province and two other top officials as they traveled to meet with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most prominent Shiite leader, in the holy city of Najaf to discuss upcoming elections.
According to The AP, the delegation was stopped and the members kidnapped about 65 kilometers south of Baghdad on Friday. The U.S. military said the delegation was traveling in two cars - one of which managed to escape the ambush.
In Baqouba, armed men broke into the house of a translator working with the U.S. Army and then beheaded him, police said Saturday. An Iraqi policeman was killed by masked gunmen as he left his house in Baghdad's southern Dora neighborhood.
Elsewhere, a booby-trapped car went off Saturday at a gas station in Mahaweel, about 55 kilometers south of Baghdad. One man was killed and several others were injured, police said.
In Baghdad's western district of Khadraa, gunmen shot dead Abboud Khalaf al-Lahibi, deputy secretary-general of the National Front for Iraqi tribes - a group representing several Iraqi tribes, said his aide, Ibrahim al-Farhan. A bodyguard was killed and three other people were injured in the attack, he said.
Also Saturday, gunmen kidnapped Mohammed Khodr, a representative of the Human Rights Organization in Iraq, in the town of Riyadh, southwest of Kirkuk, police said.
A U.S. soldier also was killed Friday in a "non-hostile" vehicle accident in the western province of Anbar, the U.S. military said.
