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Police: Gunmen kidnap Iraqi Olympic team

Committee chief and around 50 bodyguards and athletes reportedly taken

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Gunmen wearing camouflage uniforms abducted about 50 people, including the head of Iraq’s national Olympic committee, while they were holding a meeting in Baghdad on Saturday, police sources said.

Details of the mass abduction were sketchy, but police said the incident took place at a major conference center in central Baghdad. Some mass kidnappings reported by police have later turned out to be arrests made by other security departments.

Police sources said the well-known Olympic Committee chief Ahmed al-Hadjiya and 21 bodyguards had been taken, along with some 30 athletes, by gunmen in blue camouflage uniforms who were driving official-looking four-wheel drive vehicles.

A Reuters journalist saw a convoy of such vehicles with a large number of young people apparently under arrest driving at speed through the Karrada neighborhood close to the conference hall around 1.30 p.m. (5:30 a.m. ET). It was not clear if the incidents were related.

Iraq’s Olympic Committee was dominated by Saddam Hussein’s son Uday until the U.S. invasion of 2003.