2 Iraqi policemen killed in car bombing

A car bomb killed two policemen who were trying to defuse it in Baghdad's Sadr City section, where officers were on high alert Thursday after receiving tips that militants were moving more bombs into the Shiite slum.

Four civilians were wounded in the blast at 11:30 p.m. Wednesday on al-Fallah St. in the sprawling district in eastern Baghdad, police Capt. Mohammed Ismail said. He said explosives experts successfully defused a second car bomb in the same area.

Another police officer said authorities had stepped up security in Sadr City after receiving tips that 10 car bombs had entered the area and militants were trying to smuggle more in.

The officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons, said the number of police patrols and checkpoints had been increased and police were intensifying searches of cars entering the district.

The Interior Ministry confirmed that it had received tips about car bombs aimed at Sadr City from people calling into a terror hotline.

Sadr City, which houses some 2.5 million people, is a stronghold of the Mahdi Army, a militia that is loyal to anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and has been blamed in some of the country's worst sectarian violence.

Also Thursday, gunmen in military uniforms kidnapped dozens of people from a commercial area in central Baghdad, police said.

The attackers drove up to the busy al-Sanak area in about 10 sport utility vehicles and began rounding up shop owners and bystanders. Two police officers said 50 to 70 people were abducted.

The assault came nearly a month after gunmen in Interior Ministry commando uniforms abducted scores of men from a Higher Education Ministry office building. The Education Ministry is predominantly Sunni Arab. About half of the victims were released.

Al-Sanak is an area of stores selling auto parts, small power generators and agricultural equipment.

The stores are owned by a mix of Shiites, Sunnis and others, and it was not immediately clear why it was targeted. Victims in previous mass kidnappings have been rounded up, with those belonging to one or the other Islamic sect later released.

Mohammed Qassim Jassim, a 37-year-old owner of a clothes store in the area, said the attack started about 11 a.m.

"We heard cars and shootings in the area and then we saw gunmen wearing Iraqi army uniforms and driving SUVs who were snatching people from the shops and street. It took like 20 minutes for them to fan out and control the area," he said.

Elsewhere in the capital Thursday, gunmen stormed a boys' school in the southwestern Alam neighborhood, killing a Shiite guard, police said.

Two mortar shells also landed on a rural area on the edge of the predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Dora in southern Baghdad, wounding three people and causing a huge fire, police said.