BAGHDAD, Iraq — Gunmen kidnapped a senior Interior Ministry official in the heart of the Iraqi capital yesterday, as Baghdad's mayor protested his ouster at gunpoint, rival factions fought over the governorship of another province and Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari sought to quell political disputes in the capital and the south.

Brig. Gen. Khudayer Abbas, chief of the administrative affairs office in the Interior Ministry, was dragged from his car on Andalus Square and spirited away in another vehicle, according to police Maj. Abbas Mohammed Salman. No group claimed responsibility.

The Interior Ministry supervises police and elite paramilitary units that are at the forefront of the fight against insurgents.

Later in the afternoon, Abbas' wife received a phone call from her husband's mobile phone. The speaker, who was not her husband, told her: "We are keeping your husband as a hostage," police sources said.

Baghdad Mayor Alaa Tamimi said gunmen took over his office Monday and physically installed Baghdad's governor, Hussain Tahhan, in his place.

The armed men appeared to be bodyguards of the governor and some witnesses asserted they were linked to Shiite Muslim militia groups. The takeover occurred during a sandstorm when few people went to work.

Tahhan, who is governor of the province of Baghdad, which includes the city and its suburbs, insisted yesterday that he would serve only temporarily.

Tahhan is a member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI — a leading Shiite political party that is a member of al-Jaafari's parliamentary bloc.

Tamimi, a secularist and civil engineer who once worked in Iraq's nuclear program, fled the country in the 1990s and returned after Saddam Hussein's ouster promising to clean up Baghdad. He was appointed mayor before the United States transferred sovereignty back to Iraqis in June 2004.

A new Baghdad provincial council was elected in January, and it asked Tamimi to step down. Some had raised questions about his integrity, while others expressed frustration that he was unable to deliver on promises to provide basic services and get rid of corruption.

Al-Jaafari said Tamimi's removal was justified because he had failed to satisfy the Iraqis running the local government.

As the controversy in Baghdad continued, al-Jaafari dispatched emissaries to the southern town of Samawa to try to halt a running fight among militias linked to three different Shiite political parties. Although Japanese troops are stationed in the city, it was immobilized by protests and riots earlier in the week that left a least one person dead and dozens injured.

The demonstrators, many of them allied with radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, have complained of poor services and demanded the resignation of the provincial governor, who is allied with SCIRI. The provincial council reportedly voted to oust the governor, but he apparently has continued to report to work. Meanwhile, SCIRI members accused the local police chief of attempting to assassinate them.

The upheaval over the Baghdad mayor's job and the unrest in Samawa underscored the fragility of Iraq's local political institutions as the national government works to hammer out a new constitution and cope with ongoing violence.

The Bush administration is hoping that political progress will eventually deflate the Sunni Arab-led rebellion and enable the United States and its international partners to begin withdrawing troops next year.

Key to that strategy is the democratic constitution followed by elections in December. Iraq's parliament is to approve the draft charter by Monday, but major differences among ethnic and political factions threatened to delay completion of the document.

The major obstacle is the Kurdish demand that Iraq be transformed into a federal state. The Kurds have insisted on federalism to protect their self-rule in three northern provinces.

Shiites and Kurds swept to power in January elections while Arab Sunnis dominant under Saddam have been sidelined in a new political landscape fraught with sectarian tensions.