BAGHDAD — The TV show is one of the country's most popular, a form of "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" in which a TV crew surprises needy Iraqis with food and gifts during the holy month of Ramadan.
On Saturday, as the Sharqiya TV personnel homed in on a family reeling from losses suffered in a massive bombing, kidnappers zeroed in on them. Hours later, three journalists and their driver were found dead, shot in the head and chest and dumped on the outskirts of Mosul, a northern city that has become one of the most violent in Iraq.
By Saturday night, police said they had arrested five suspects. The security chief of Mosul, which has long been plagued by Al Qaeda in Iraq and other Sunni Arab insurgent groups, said had he known the crew's plans, he would have provided guards for them.
The abduction, which occurred in the teeming Zanjili neighborhood of west Mosul, was striking for its brazenness and brutality. It happened as Farida Adil, one of the hosts of "Breaking Your Fast Is on Us," waited in an apartment with the family that was to be featured in the show's next episode: a woman with six children, whose husband had died in a massive bombing in January. Adil, speaking later on Sharqiya, said upon arriving in the area she heard an explosion and some gunshots and became nervous. But one of her colleagues had assured her Mosul was safe and that the television station was much-loved among residents.
As Adil waited in the family's modest home to film the introduction, the other crew members were making their way from the car, bringing in the equipment and causing excitement among residents crammed into the trash-strewn walkways.
"They went through narrow alleyways. The people crowded around them. The criminals were among that crowd," said Gen. Riyadh Jalal Tawfiq, commander of Iraqi security forces in Mosul. "The operation of kidnapping was done in a very quick way."
Adil didn't know anything was wrong until a decision was made to go first to the scene of the January bombing and return to the apartment later. She was about to go outside when someone told her the crew had been abducted.
Adil remained inside. Eventually, she covered her auburn hair with a scarf, put on a long black abaya, and slipped out. Adil normally does not wear a scarf and she dresses in Western clothing.
The bodies of her colleagues were found a short time later.
