Daily outbreaks of violence just business as usual for most Iraqis

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Everyone stayed quiet.

The gunmen ordered witnesses to stand aside and remain still as they dragged the shopkeeper known as Abu Ammar away Saturday afternoon. The victim, about 50, didn't say a word, although he squirmed and tried to break free.

"Stay where you are," one of the gunmen, a clean-shaven man in his 20s wearing a black bulletproof vest and holding an assault rifle, quietly told passers-by. "Don't move."

The eight plainclothes kidnappers didn't even raise their voices when one of them smashed the shopkeeper's bespectacled face with the butt of an assault rifle. They shooed away a shop employee beseeching them to take along a small plastic bag, possibly filled with the victim's medicines, stuffed him into one of two white sport-utility vehicles without license plates and drove away from the Colors stationery shop.

Drivers watching from their cars turned their heads and continued on their way. Pedestrians took hold of their loved ones and proceeded on with their errands. It was business as usual in Iraq, where at least 79 people were killed Saturday in bomb, rocket and gunfire attacks around the country.

The victim at the shop, known for its high quality, wide selection and expensive prices, probably was the target of a kidnapping for ransom.

Police in Baghdad alone discovered the bodies of 51 gunshot victims, some shot dead on the streets and others abducted, blindfolded and brutalized before being shot execution-style and dumped in desolate lots.

The 3 p.m. kidnapping was pulled off in central Baghdad's Karada neighborhood, one of the city's safest, less than one mile away from military forces stationed in the Green Zone, a few hundred yards from Iraqi police checkpoints and the armed security details of political parties and Western contractors. It put on view the enormous challenge of restoring security to a country coming undone by multiple layers of violence.

Among the 51 bodies found in Baghdad, two were fished out of the Tigris River, both with bullet wounds to the head and signs of torture. Another five, shot execution-style, were discovered in a garbage dump east of the capital.

U.S. and Iraqi officials struggled to contain violence beyond the capital. A car bomb targeting an Army checkpoint in the northern city of Tal Afar killed 14 Iraqis and injured 13.