The New York Times-20080128-No Survivors After Night Attack At Home of Baghdad Ex-Official

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No Survivors After Night Attack At Home of Baghdad Ex-Official

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A band of attackers on Saturday night broke into the home of a man who was a senior Baghdad city official under the government of Saddam Hussein and shot and stabbed him and his family, killing everyone in the home, an Iraqi official said Sunday. The American military also disclosed the deaths of two United States soldiers in Baghdad, one on Saturday and the other on Sunday.

Also on Saturday, the leader of an Iraqi militia that had joined forces with American troops was killed by a bomb planted inside his car in northern Baghdad, the American military said late Sunday. The killing is the latest attack in a campaign by militants to single out and kill militia leaders who have agreed to provide security with payment from the Americans. At least a half dozen other militia leaders have been killed in the past month, Iraqi officials have said.

The former Baghdad municipal official, Ahmed Jawad Hashem, retired several years ago and lived with his family on the outskirts of the Sadr City neighborhood, an Interior Ministry official said on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for attribution. Late on Saturday night, attackers slipped inside his house and shot him and his wife, Nisreen, in the chest and then slit their throats, the official said. The killers then slit the throats of their daughter, Zaineb, and of Haider Abbas, a young man who the official said was either Mr. Hashem's nephew or son-in-law.

Five women employed by Baghdad University were kidnapped on Sunday by gunmen who stopped their minibus in the neighborhood of New Baghdad, in the eastern part of the capital, the Interior Ministry official said.

Few details were available about the deaths of the two American soldiers. One was killed by an improvised bomb on Saturday while he was patrolling on foot in Baghdad near the heavily protected Shiite neighborhood of Kadhimiya. The other was killed Sunday in his vehicle in northeastern Baghdad when attackers detonated a bomb.

Commanders from the Third Infantry Division, which has deployed large forces south of Baghdad, say militia groups called Concerned Local Citizens, or C.L.C.'s, have not shown signs of returning to the insurgency and continue to grow stronger. But they said the security situation remained tenuous.

Conceivably, they could jump back over the fence and be part of the problem again, the division commander, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, told reporters on Sunday in Baghdad. You've got to watch that very closely.