Dozens Are Kidnapped at Baghdad University - New York Times

Dozens Are Kidnapped at Baghdad University - New York Times: "Dozens Are Kidnapped at Baghdad University
By ALI ADEEB and JOHN O’NEIL

BAGHDAD, Nov. 14 — Several dozen employees of a government research institute were kidnapped here today in a methodical daylight raid that prompted the minister of higher education to berate Parliament and shut the nation’s universities until security improves.

Estimates of the number of kidnapped varied widely, with a spokesman for the Ministry of Interior putting the number at between 30 and 40 and the department of higher education saying anywhere between 70 and 150 men were missing. An interior ministry spokesman said that he did not think the number of vehicles reportedly involved could have carried off both the gunmen and the higher number of victims described by education officials.

Academics have recently become prime targets in the country’s continuing violence, along with members of other professional groups, like doctors and nurses. In the space of week in October, a geology professor who was a member of a Sunni party was gunned down and the dean of Baghdad University’s economics department, a Shiite, was slain along with his family. Such killings have contributed to the growing exodus of highly educated Iraqis described in a United"