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PM vows Baghdad security crackdown

Abductors with police uniforms, cars take 50 people in capital

An Iraqi mourns for a relative Tuesday outside the morgue of a Baghdad hospital.

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BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Iraq's prime minister on Tuesday vowed to impose a strict new law-and-order plan to stem rising violence in Baghdad even as the Interior Ministry investigated whether Iraqi police played a role in Monday's mass kidnapping.

The news came on a day when bombs, mortars and gunmen killed at least 11 people and wounded 26 in the Iraqi capital -- and nine heads were found along a highway in Hadid. (Watch the effects of a rise in violence -- 2:04)

"The parties that are against the political process have increased their bloody attacks," Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said. Without naming the groups, he accused them of trying to topple his unity government that was sworn in a little more than two weeks ago.

Al-Maliki is still working to fill the top two security post in his Cabinet, the defense and interior ministers, after another delay was announced Sunday.

The prime minister said 2,500 Iraqi detainees would be released to further "reconciliation and national dialogue," according to The Associated Press. The AP called that an apparent effort to ease outrage in the minority Sunni Arab population about accusations of prisoner mistreatment and random detentions.

The Interior Ministry's investigation will try to determine whether Iraqi police or insurgents posing as police were responsible for the kidnapping of 50 people Monday in Baghdad.

At a news conference Tuesday, Sunni politicians accused the Iraqi government of complicity in the abductions.

"We have enough evidence to prove the involvement of the Iraqi authorities in this raid," said politician Alaa Maki. Officials at Maki's office later declined to provide any details of such evidence.

The kidnappers wore the uniforms of Iraqi police commandos and drove at least 13 vehicles with police markings when they raided three transportation companies, an Interior Ministry official said. (Full story)

Iraqi police did not respond to the daytime raids, which witnesses said lasted about an hour on a busy downtown street.

But an Interior Ministry official denied the abductors were police.

Heads found on highway

Iraqi police found nine heads Tuesday in Hadid, a town just west of Baquba and about 37 miles (60 kilometers) north of Baghdad, police and hospital officials said.

The heads were wrapped in black plastic bags and shoved into fruit boxes, authorities said. Their identities could not be immediately confirmed.

It was the second such discovery in four days. On Saturday, eight heads were found in Hadid; they also had been stuffed into fruit boxes.

Also Tuesday, a car bomb killed five people and wounded 18 others when it detonated near a funeral procession in southwestern Baghdad, a police official said.

A roadside bomb exploded at Allawi bus station in central Baghdad, killing a woman and wounding a child, Iraqi police said. Police said the blast was targeting a passing U.S. military convoy.

In addition, three mortar rounds landed at the Nadha bus station in central Baghdad, killing two civilians and wounding seven others, police said. The nearby Iraqi Interior Ministry was the target, authorities said.

Earlier Tuesday, gunmen killed a Baghdad neighborhood council member and two bodyguards as they traveled by car, an Interior Ministry official said.

The main Baghdad morgue reported receiving 6,025 bodies in the first five months of the year, including those of 1,398 civilians killed in shooting attacks and other violent crimes in May, according to a high-ranking Iraqi Health Ministry official.

Other developments

The chairman of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. John Warner, a Virginia Republican, on Tuesday asked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to provide witnesses quickly for the panel's upcoming hearings on Iraqi deaths in Hamdaniya and Haditha. The U.S. military is investigating allegations that Marines intentionally killed up to 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha in November and the death of an Iraqi man in Hamdaniya.

Navy investigators have evidence that U.S. Marines may have committed "premeditated" murder in the April shooting death of the Iraqi in Hamdaniya, a military officer close to the inquiry told CNN. (Full story)

Iraqi soldiers rescued an Iraqi hostage in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, after nearly three weeks in captivity, the U.S. military said Tuesday. In Sunday's operation, the Iraqi troops detained four of the hostage's captors -- members of Mujahedeen of Ramadi -- which the U.S. military said has ties to al Qaeda in Iraq. The hostage, who was not identified, was abducted May 17 and held for $50,000 ransom, the military said.

More than a week after being wounded in a car bombing, CBS News correspondent Kimberly Dozier was "in good spirits" Tuesday and expected to depart Wednesday for the United States, the network said. "The swelling of Kimberly's face has decreased significantly, she had the first physical therapy session on her legs, and she had her hair washed," CBS said Tuesday in a statement. Two colleagues, a U.S. soldier and an Iraqi translator were killed in the May 29 bombing in Baghdad.

A Baghdad court Monday sentenced Mustafa Salman, an Iraqi, to life in prison in connection with the 2004 abduction and killing of Iraqi-British aid worker Margaret Hassan. (Full story)

CNN's Mohammed Tawfeeq contributed to this report.