Hunt still on in Iraq for abducted contractors

Story Highlights

• Troops are searching for five security contractors, including four Americans
• U.S. Embassy says ambush involved people posing as Iraqi police
• One hostage identified as Paul Reuben, a former police officer from Minnesota
• Iraqi Interior Ministry retracts report that two American hostages were rescued

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BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Coalition and Iraqi troops in southeastern Iraq continued their hunt Friday night for five Western security contractors abducted the day before.

The five included four Americans and an Austrian, all employees of Crescent Security Corp. operating over the southeastern border in Kuwait.

The Iraqi Interior Ministry said earlier Friday that police had rescued two Americans from a house but later retracted the statement. (Read full story about abducted man from Minnesota)

A strike operation was conducted Friday by multinational forces in the Safwan area, where the kidnappings took place, the U.S. military said.

Neither the British nor the U.S. military would say whether it was in connection with the abductions. Britain's 7,000-member contingent in Iraq is based in nearby Basra.

During the operation, troops were fired on by gunmen in buildings. The troops returned fire and killed two gunmen, the U.S. military said. There were no detentions.

An official from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad provided more details about the Thursday incident:

The convoy, consisting of 43 heavy trucks and six security vehicles, was stopped at what appeared to be an Iraqi police checkpoint on Highway 8 near Safwan on the Kuwait border.

People posing as Iraqi police officers took 19 trucks and one security vehicle.

Fourteen people were taken and nine of those -- truck drivers -- were released. Five security personnel were kept.

The supply convoy was traveling from Kuwait, where Crescent Security operates, to Tallil Airbase near Nasiriya, a company spokesman said.

The embassy's information conforms with what a military source told CNN earlier, except that the source identified the people who ambushed the convoy as local militiamen posing as police.

The Crescent Security spokesman would not divulge the number of people in the convoy. He identified some of the released hostages as being of South Asian origin.

Except for the missing five, "everyone else has been accounted for," the spokesman said.

One of the kidnapped Americans was identified as Paul Reuben, a former police officer from the Minneapolis, Minnesota, suburb of St. Louis Park. (Full story)

The Austrian is a 25-year-old former soldier, the Austrian Foreign Ministry said.

Reuben's brother, Patrick, who lives in New Richmond, Wisconsin, told CNN affiliate KARE Friday afternoon the family had spoken with government officials and that the State Department "is assuming everyone is alive right now."

Patrick Reuben's wife, Jennifer, said that when she spoke to her brother-in-law Saturday he said he was planning to come home this week.

"That's what we're still hoping for, a safe return, and hopefully very soon," Jennifer Reuben said. "He was definitely ready to come home. I don't think anyone feels safe over there."

She added, "Everyone in the family wants him to know how much they love him, and how much we want him back. We'll just sit tight and wait, and keep praying."

Crescent Security provides security for sites, individuals and convoys in Iraq, employing a mix of Western and local workers with military and law enforcement experience, according to the company's Web site. (Watch why private military contractors view their job as something worth dying for -- 7:26 )

British civilian killed in convoy 'incident'

A British civilian was killed and another was wounded in an "incident" Friday in southeastern Iraq involving members of a private civilian convoy and "Iraqi authority personnel," according to the British Foreign Office.

The convoy was from a company called Securiforce. It was unclear whether the civilian was a Securiforce employee.

A British military spokesman said earlier that Iraqi security forces and members of a civilian convoy fought around Zubeir, just southwest of Basra city, around noon.

No multinational forces were involved in the incident, the Foreign Office said.

British-led troops arrived "long after the firefight was over" to investigate, the military spokesman said.

Top Sunni group to Sunnis: Quit government

Amid the furor over a warrant for an influential Sunni Arab leader, the Iraqi government clarified Friday that it had issued an investigation warrant, not an arrest warrant.

The legal action was taken to simply "check security files linked" to Hareth al-Dhari, said an aide to Ali al-Dabbagh, the government spokesman.

Earlier, the Interior Ministry's Brig. Gen. Abdul Karim Khalaf told CNN an arrest warrant had been issued for al-Dhari, accusing him of violating Iraq's anti-terrorism law by inciting sectarian violence and killings.

Al-Dhari has been a fervent critic of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shiite-dominated government.

What happens next "depends on the decision of the Iraqi judiciary .... away from any political considerations," the government said.

The influential Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars, a group of top religious leaders for the nation's Sunni minority, denounced the "arrest warrant" for its leader and called on Sunni politicians to quit the government.

"We call on Arab League and its secretary general, Amr Moussa, to condemn this cowardly act because it contradicts all the conferences held by Arab League to achieve national reconciliation," it said.

The association believes the government targets Sunnis and their mosques, and reports of the arrest warrant threatened to further inflame Sunni-Shiite violence.

Other developments

U.S.-led coalition and Iraqi security forces launched a raid in the Sadr City area of Baghdad Friday with the aim of recovering "kidnapped persons" and to "disrupt kidnapping and terror cells," a military statement said. The raid was conducted after "intelligence" indicated an illegally armed group was holding hostages kidnapped earlier in the week in that area.

25 bullet-riddled bodies were found Friday in various neighborhoods across Baghdad, all believed to be victims of Sunni-Shiite sectarian revenge killings, police said. At least eight were blindfolded, tied up and apparently tortured, police said.

Some 57,000 U.S. troops will be sent to Iraq in early 2007 as part of routine rotations to maintain current force levels there, Pentagon officials said Friday. (Full story)

CNN's Arwa Damon, Erin McLaughlin, Ingrid Formanek, Jamie McIntyre and Mohammed Tawfeeq contributed to this report.

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