Iraqi lawmakers renew state of emergency amid ongoing violence

An Iraqi police officer stands guard after a roadside bomb ripped through downtown Baghdad on Monday

BAGHDAD (AP) — Parliament extended Iraq's state of emergency Monday as gunmen seized 14 employees from computer stores in downtown Baghdad in the second mass kidnapping in as many days.

Seven cars pulled up to the shops in front of Baghdad's Technical University, and gunmen wearing military-style uniforms surrounded the buildings, police Lt. Thair Mahmoud said. The attackers then forced the employees outside and into sport-utility vehicles at gunpoint, he said.

On Sunday evening, 24 workers at a food factory in Baghdad were seized by gunmen who shot and wounded two workers who refused to climb into a refrigerated truck with their fellow captives. Seven bodies found late Sunday in the predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Dora were identified Monday as people who had been abducted in the raid on the food factory, Police Lt. Maitham Abdul Razzaq said.

Similar mass kidnappings in the past have been blamed on either Sunni extremists or Shiite death squads, who sort the captives by their sect and kill their targets.

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