BAGHDAD, Iraq — Gunmen seized the Syrian Catholic archbishop of Mosul yesterday as he was on his way to visit parishioners, an attack the Vatican denounced as "an act of terrorism."

No group claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of Archbishop Basile Georges Casmoussa, but Islamic extremists have increasingly targeted the country's tiny Christian minority in a campaign that has included bombing churches in Mosul and Baghdad.

Elsewhere, insurgents killed at least 15 Iraqi security personnel, continuing the almost daily carnage against those viewed as collaborators with the United States.

Casmoussa, 66, had left his church in Mosul at sunset to visit a family in his congregation, said Archbishop Matti Shaba, who heads the church's Baghdad diocese. Shaba said church officials in Mosul told him two carloads of attackers pulled Casmoussa from his car and stuffed him in the trunk of one of their vehicles before fleeing.

"This country has become a jungle and the strong are eating the weak," Shaba said. He described Casmoussa as "a religious man who stayed away from politics."

"Why did they kidnap him?" Shaba asked. "He was calling for religious tolerance."

Casmoussa is believed to be the highest-profile Christian to be abducted in Iraq. His kidnapping is the latest setback for a minority community that's already weathered attacks on Christian-owned liquor stores, threats against women who don't cover their hair, and a rash of church bombings in August and October that killed 10 people and wounded 50 in Baghdad and Mosul.

About 700,000 Christians live in Iraq, making up about 3 percent of the country's population. Hundreds, possibly thousands, have fled Iraq in recent months after finding themselves increasingly persecuted by Muslim extremists. Fear of attack led many church leaders to cancel Christmas events last month.

The Syrian Catholic Church is affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church as part of the so-called Eastern Rite churches in the Middle East, which recognize the pope but maintain worship practices of their own. The church has two Iraq dioceses, in Mosul and Baghdad.

Several Christian candidates are on the ballot for the Jan. 30 national-assembly elections, but like most candidates they do little campaigning in the bloody pre-election environment.

In violence today, a suicide driver in Baghdad detonated a car bomb outside the offices of Iraq's largest Shiite political party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, killing three other people, police and the U.S. military said.

Yesterday, insurgents gunned down eight Iraqi soldiers at a checkpoint in the town of Buhriz, about 35 miles north of the capital. A car bomber killed seven Iraqi policemen and wounded 25 bystanders in Bayji, 155 miles north of Baghdad.

"The enemy we're fighting is not 10 feet tall, but he's resourceful and he's persistent," said Gen. George Casey Jr., commander of U.S. forces in Iraq.

In a statement released yesterday, Casey said the number of attacks since December was only slightly higher than in the previous nine months. Of Iraq's 18 provinces, he said, only four are experiencing persistent strife.

"The perception of violence that's created by television is not that way across Iraq," Casey said.

But as perception and a sense of fear have proved to be some of the insurgents' most formidable tactics, the guerrillas have sought to spread attacks around Iraq.

Salama Khafaji, a prominent Shiite national-assembly candidate who survived an assassination attempt Sunday, dismissed the attacks as "nothing but the last breaths of a dying body."

Material from The Washington Post is included in this report.