Algeria's top envoy to Iraq, a second diplomat, and their driver were abducted yesterday in a western Baghdad neighborhood, police and embassy employees said.

Police officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the abduction took place yesterday afternoon in the upscale Mansour district, home to many embassies. They said they had no further information.

An embassy employee said by telephone that charge d'affaires Balarousi Ali "was abducted 15 minutes ago" and that Algerian staff "have no further information."

Police officials said the envoy, along with another diplomat, was kidnapped near the al-Sa'a resturant in Mansour when his car was stopped by gunmen in two cars who dragged him from his vehicle.

Earlier this month, gunmen ambushed three other top diplomats from Muslim countries in western Baghdad, all in apparent bids to scare off foreign governments and isolate Iraq from the Arab world.
 
Insurgents claimed to have killed one, the Egyptian top envoy. Bahrain's top envoy was slightly wounded, and Pakistan's ambassador escaped injury in those attacks.

Al-Qaida in Iraq, which claimed responsibility for the attacks, has threatened Arab and Muslim countries that co-operate with the US-backed Iraqi government.

In earlier statements posted on the Internet, the country's most feared terror group said it wanted to seize "as many ambassadors as we can" to punish governments that support Iraqi Government.

A total of 49 countries or entities have some form of diplomatic representation in Iraq, including 18 Arab or non-Arab Muslim countries, according to Iraq's Foreign Ministry and country websites.

Bombing hits checkpoint

Meanwhile, a suicide car bomb hit an Iraqi army checkpoint south of Baghdad yesterday, killing seven soldiers and wounding several others, police said.

"A suicide bomber rammed an explosive-laden vehicle into an Iraqi army checkpoint in Mahmoudiyah, some 30 kilometers south of Baghdad, killing five soldiers and wounding several others," a policeman said on condition of anonymity.

Iraqi officials released new figures showing that a total of 8,175 Iraqis have been killed in fighting in the last 10 months, the vast majority of them civilians.

The new figures come as the Iraqi Government sharply disputed a British research group's claim on Tuesday that more Iraqis are dying from crime and US-led coalition forces than from the insurgency.

Iraq Body Count said on Tuesday that about 25,000 civilians had died in violence here in the two years after the start of the US-led invasion.

"We consider that it is mistaken in claiming that the plague of terrorism has killed fewer Iraqis than the Multinational Forces," the government statement said. "The international forces try to avoid civilian casualties, whereas the terrorists target civilians and try to kill as many of them as they can."

Iraq Body Count compiled its figures of killings that occurred between March 20, 2003 and March 19, 2005 from reports by the major news agencies and British and American newspapers.

The results could not be independently confirmed. US and coalition authorities say they have not kept a count of such deaths, and Iraqi accounting has proven to be haphazard.

(China Daily July 22, 2005)