Gunmen seized 10 workers from a bakery yesterday in a predominantly Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad, while a car bomb exploded near a university in the northern city of Mosul, killing one woman and wounding 19 other people, police said.
The scattered attacks came after a day of unrelenting violence that killed more than two dozen people as insurgents foiled heightened security measures, dealing a blow to the Iraqi government's pledge to bring peace to the capital.
The US military, meanwhile, combed through the "Triangle of Death," a predominantly Sunni Arab region south of the capital for a second day looking for two soldiers missing since an attack on Friday at a traffic checkpoint that also killed one of their comrades.
Thousands of US and Iraqi troops also set up outposts yesterday west of Baghdad as part of an operation to establish Iraqi army bases in the volatile Sunni Arab city of Ramadi.
US commanders stressed that the operation was not a large-scale assault on the city, despite reports by Arab TV networks and some Western outlets of an impending attack similar to the 2004 operation to rid Fallujah of insurgents.
They said it was an "isolation" tactic to prevent insurgents from receiving supplies or reinforcements from outside.
Two long columns of US and Iraqi armored vehicles met little resistance late on Saturday as they encircled the southern side of Ramadi -- the capital of volatile Anbar Province -- although a handful of roadside bombs were discovered and detonated.
Insurgents also fired two mortar shells that landed about 500m away from where the troops were establishing their outposts and the US Army fired back, but no injuries were reported.
Gunmen arrived in two cars, broke into the bakery in the northern suburb of Kazimiyah and abducted the 10 workers, police Lieutenant Mohammed Khayoun said. A mortar shell struck a well-known market in the same neighborhood on Saturday, killing four people and wounding 13.
A mortar shell also hit the al-Sadiq University for Islamic Studies on Palestine Street, one of Baghdad's main thoroughfares, wounding five students and a teacher, police Lieutenant Ahmed Qasim said.
The car bomb was apparently targeting a US convoy when it exploded near Mosul University and most of the 19 wounded were female students, police Brigadier Abdel-Hamid Khala said.
Police also found the bullet-riddled bodies of 10 men who showed signs of torture in several areas of Baghdad, and the body of a man who was shot in the head was found in Karbalah.
Witnesses who said they saw Friday's attack against the US troops in the volatile area south of Baghdad claimed the soldiers were led away by masked gunmen, but the reports could not be confirmed.
Ahmed Khalaf Falah, a farmer, said three Humvees were manning a checkpoint when they came under fire from many directions. Two of the vehicles went after the assailants, but the third was hit before it could move, he said.
Seven masked gunmen, including one with what he described as a heavy machine gun, killed the driver of the third vehicle, then took the two other US soldiers captive, the witness said. The account could not be verified.
The New York Times reported in its late edition yesterday that Iraqi residents in the area said they saw two US soldiers taken prisoner by a group of masked guerrillas, put into two cars and driven away.
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