Gunmen seize 50 Iraq security men

Gunmen dressed in Iraqi police uniforms have raided the offices of a security firm in Baghdad, seizing 50 employees.

The incident happened in the eastern Zayouna district of the city. Among those captured was the head of the private firm, al-Rawafed.

It came after the bodies of 20 men were found dumped in the Iraqi capital.

Eighteen were left strangled or shot in a minibus in a western area populated mainly by Sunni Arabs. Two were found in east Baghdad tied up and shot.

Iraq has suffered a rise in sectarian attacks since a Shia shrine was bombed last month - but it is not clear if this was the cause.

However, the dumping of bodies has previously been a sign of the violence between minority Sunni Arab and majority Shia groups.

In other violence:

Two policemen are killed and five people hurt in a roadside bombing in central Baghdad

Another roadside bomb targets a convoy of Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr in central Baghdad, killing two people, police and ministry sources say. The minister was not present

At least two people are killed in a car bomb in the western town of Falluja, police say

The US military says one of its soldiers was killed and four others wounded on Tuesday by a roadside bomb as their patrol passed in Tal Afar, north-west of Mosul.

No resistance

The attack on the al-Rawafed security company was carried out by uniformed gunmen, who forced the workers into several vehicles.

We found a rope round the neck of one of the [18 minibus] victims

Yarmouk hospital source

Edging towards precipice

The victims - who included bodyguards, drivers, technicians and other employees - did not resist because they assumed their abductors were special forces, an interior ministry spokesman said.

Another ministry official told the BBC the raid was being investigated, but that those responsible were not associated with the Iraqi police.

The company - whose offices are located in a mixed Shia-Sunni area - is one of dozens providing protection for businesses in Iraq.

No identification

Earlier, 18 men were found bound and blindfolded in an abandoned bus on the road between Amiriyah and Khadra - two mainly Sunni districts of west Baghdad.

Police said the bodies had no identification papers on them. Some reports said two of the men looked like foreign Arabs

The bodies have been taken to a morgue at the city's Yarmouk hospital.

Hospital sources told the Associated Press news agency that the deaths appeared recent and that two of the victims had been shot, while the others were strangled.

"We found a rope round the neck of one of the [18] victims," a hospital source told Reuters news agency.

The bombing of the shrine at Samarra on 22 February - and subsequent reprisals in which more than 400 people died - have sparked fears of civil war.

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