By Mariam Karouny and Ahmed Rasheed
1 hour, 50 minutes ago
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's foreign minister said on Wednesday he suspected Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia was behind the abduction of five Britons from a government building in Baghdad.
U.S. and Iraqi troops raided Baghdad neighborhoods overnight, including the Mehdi Army stronghold of Sadr City, in a hunt for the Britons, who were kidnapped in an audacious daylight raid by dozens of gunmen, police and residents said.
A senior Iraqi government official said Tuesday's kidnappings could be in retaliation for the killing of the militia's top commander by British-backed Iraqi special forces in the southern city of Basra last week.
"It may be the Mehdi Army because the location of the (kidnapping) is in their theatre of operations," Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari told Reuters.
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