At least 30 bus passengers kidnapped in Iraq

TIKRIT: Gunmen manning a fake security checkpoint north of Baghdad kidnapped between 30 and 40 mostly Shiite bus passengers heading to the northern town of Balad on Tuesday, police said.   

An Iraqi official from the Joint Coordination Centre in Tikrit, which oversees US and Iraqi security forces in the area, said the buses were halted by the gang near Tarmiya, 40 kilometres north of Baghdad.   

They were carrying Shiite passengers from the capital to Balad, a town which was recently at the centre of brutal eruption of tit-for-tat sectarian murders between rival Sunni and Shiite armed factions, he said.