Iraqi Red Crescent aid workers suspended work in war-torn Baghdad after two dozen of their colleagues fell victim to the latest mass kidnap to shock a city plagued by sectarian violence. More than 40 bullet-ridden corpses were discovered across Baghdad and 16 people killed in attacks as new US Defence Secretary Robert Gates took office in Washington amid deepening US divisions about how to handle the crisis. Hired guns from a US private security firm sprang a former Iraqi minister convicted of a 2.5-billion-dollar (1.9-billion-euro) fraud from a police cell, a judge said, in a further sign of the chaos engulfing the country. ‘We have frozen or stopped temporarily activities in Baghdad, but this is not affecting civilian needs. This was logical because our main staff is still kidnapped,’ the Iraqi Red Crescent’s secretary general Mazen Abdallah said. In addition to the main branch targeted in the kidnapping, the Iraqi Red Crescent has closed another 40 subsidiary offices in Baghdad, affecting more than 600 staff, a large proportion of them security guards, Abdallah said. Seventeen of more than 30 men snatched in Sunday’s brazen raid by gunmen dressed in police uniforms have been released, including […]