BAGHDAD — "They're here! They're here!"
The panicked cry rose from the crowd of shoppers and businessmen, sending them into a stampede past storefronts and shocked onlookers. Men, women and children fell over handcarts and folding chairs, knocking one another down, hiding behind buildings and seeking shelter in shops.
None knew who "they" were: uniformed men firing weapons in the air and herding people into trucks, just a few hundred yards from the edge of the U.S.-guarded Green Zone.
But most had suspected such a day might come to the Sinak market of downtown Baghdad. All knew to run at first sight of the uniformed gunmen who have become signature elements of the all-too-common mass kidnappings in the Iraqi capital.
"We weren't really surprised," said Hossein abu Marwa, an employee of an air conditioner shop in the sprawling market. "We face such threats on a daily basis. Sometimes we hear they're coming from this side or that side. We don't know who is shooting. We don't know who is coming. Are they the resistance? Are they armed criminals? You don't know if they're Sunni. You don't know if they're Shiite."
This time, at least five dozen people disappeared within minutes, stuffed into four delivery trucks and hauled away toward eastern Baghdad.
An Interior Ministry official reported later that at least 23 of the shopkeepers had been released unharmed in northern Baghdad, after showing their captors identity cards bearing names associated with Shiite Muslims.
The fate of previous victims of mass kidnappings has been brutal: Most show up dead within days, often with signs of torture, such as drill holes.
Thursday's abduction took place in and around the auto-supply section of the open-air Sinak wholesale market, a few hundred yards from the headquarters of Iraq's Defense Ministry.
It began around 10 a.m. when a convoy of about a dozen sport utility vehicles of the type often used by official security forces screeched into the market and sealed off the main roads, witnesses said.
Heavy gunfire erupted almost immediately.
Ghaith Abdul-Kahdem, owner of three shops in the marketplace, had been stuck in traffic and was arriving late for work, just as the kidnapping was unfolding. He heard the shots and saw police vehicles and quickly hid under a bridge.
"I saw the four-wheel-drive cars arrive, about 10 of them, as well as trucks for transporting prisoners," he said. "I immediately realized something grave was going on."
